Tag: Children

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#AtoZchallenge Blogging challenges Christianity Life

26 lessons from God’s metaphors: #10

I have three children: Miss11, Miss8 and Mr7. I love them more than I could possibly imagine, and want to protect them from the evils I know exist in the world. I’m sure all parents feel the same. Before becoming a parent, I never felt this way. I didn’t know it was possible to feel the overwhelming love that would sacrifice everything for this child who relies on you so utterly.

As a teenager in High School, I once heard the story of a man who controlled the switch at a train track. He was about to switch the track for a passenger train to pass safely by, when he realised that his four-year-old son was playing on it. Now that’s a dilemma! Choose who dies – a train full of passengers, or your own child?

That story has remained vivid enough that I could remember it this last week, and use it for an illustration today. Snopes though, tells the background to the story, as ‘story’ it appears to be.

JNonetheless, it is a relatable illustration of God and His choice – to send His son to Earth, knowing He would be killed the most excruciating way possible. For us. Because it was the only way that He could save us from the consequences of our sin. And Jesus – who knew, and obeyed.

Now I’m a parent, God’s choice confounds me and humbles me. There’s no way I would voluntarily sacrifice my one of my own children for strangers. Not even for friends. And yet – that’s what God did. And Jesus – who knew, and obeyed? The mind reels.

God loves us, did you know?

I’m humbled by that.

And that’s my takeaway lesson for today. J, for Jesus. Who obeyed.

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#AtoZchallenge Blogging challenges Christianity More about me teaching

26 lessons from God’s metaphors: #7

As a teacher for *cough* over twenty *cough* years, I’ve had a few student teachers in that time. You know, the people who study ‘teaching’ at Uni, who come and practice teaching for a few weeks, or months, to learn the ropes of how a classroom operates. Or should.

Some of those student teachers were fantastic. Dedicated, willing to learn, like little sponges eager to hear and absorb ‘the pearls of wisdom that dropped from my lips’. (Ha! I just quoted from my own Film and TV teacher, from my own days as a Senior. She was a fervent teacher, Nicky Bricknell.)

Other student teachers? Not so much.

But when it boiled down to it, they weren’t in charge. I was. The responsibility for the cherubs in my classes lay entirely with me.

Likewise with God.

FullSizeRender (3)In the book of John, chapter 10, verses 11 to 14, Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me.”

I like the idea that I’m not in the class where the student teacher has assumed entire responsibility. I’m in the class where my teacher is the Head Honcho. So I can be confident that my needs – all of them! – will be attended to. He’ll look after me, because I belong to Him.

And that’s my takeaway lesson for Day 7. Because God is the GOOD shepherd, I can be confident. (And if you’re interested in seeing what BAD shepherding is like, and how God feels about it, read Ezekiel 34. But be warned: He doesn’t like it!)

So on that note, have a great day, dear reader!

— KRidwyn

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family anecdotes More about me teaching Work

What I learned, going bald

This time last year, I did it. I shaved my head.

I’d always said I would, you know. I’d wondered what being bald might feel like, since I hit double digits. I’d always imagined a sense of freedom; the chance to ‘reinvent myself’ as it were; the ability to start afresh; be a new me; be who I wanted to be; and so on and so forth, with all the gush which comes from being young and living life intensely.

Screen Shot 2016-03-20 at 8.40.01 pmAs the years went by, I still wondered about it. Then all of a sudden, I realised I was getting older. (Took a while. Dumb, I know.) Which meant, if I wanted to shave my head and NOT have people think I actually *did* have cancer, the years were running out for me to get around to doing it.

Screen Shot 2016-03-20 at 8.39.42 pmSo last year, at 40, I did it. I shaved my head.

“This will be a once-in-a-lifetime thing!” I insisted to my extremely unimpressed Hubby. It didn’t reassure him.

“It’ll grow back!” I told my children; my own three cherubs, and the 400 plus primary school students I teach on a weekly basis. They weren’t sure they believed me. Neither was I, to tell the truth.

I did it anyway.

It grew back. Slowly.

This is Shave plus One Year.

IMG_0945

So – was it all I hoped for? Alas, no. Is anything?

In hindsight, I spent too long allaying the fears of others to relish the moment. And that’s okay – I’m not sure if I really did enjoy the experience as much as I hoped I would. There wasn’t too much re-inventing of myself happening, that’s for sure…

The attention was enjoyable, sure. I mean, who doesn’t like that? And it certainly was novel; I’d never in a million years realised I’d need to unstick my head from the car headrest, where my spiky regrowth had attached me like Velcro!

Just the other day, staff at my school shaved their heads again. I watched, remembering.

I won’t do it again. I was happy with the funds I raised, and pray for a cure, and am satisfied with my contributions to the cause thus far. But I shan’t shave my head again. And my family are happy about that.

How about you – have you ever shaved your head? Would you?

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Life random scribblings teaching

On death and other such stuff…

So I wrote last week about motivations; what’s the *real* reason behind people – and characters in novels – doing what they do. Is it all explainable? If so, then is it forgiveable? When is a crime a crime? All that kind of thing. I was trying to puzzle out how to go about writing a torture scene for my current WIP (Work in Progress). I was concerned that, having had zero experience with torturing someone – physically, anyway; I’m fairly sure that I hurt people emotionally in my past, and I’m sorry and I regret it – and having zero experience also of being tortured physically, that my writing of a torture scene would be just simply inane. How could I write something successfully when I had – you guessed it, zero! – first hand experience? Yes, imagination is all well and good, but in my opinion it’s not good enough when potential readers *have* real experience of torture, and who may find my treatment of it inane, hurtful, derogatory, deprecating. So I was worried.

And so, after several hours stewing, chewing my nails about it, and so on, I did the only thing I could do. I needed a torture scene, so I sat down and wrote it. As best I could. I guess it’s just a wait-and-see what my beta-readers think of it when I finally get it to them, huh?

I had death on my mind rather more than normal this week. Not only because I wrote my first ever torture scene, in which the character died as a consequence, but also because my doctor suggested it to me on Monday. You see, I was finalising the paperwork for Mr6’s future autism allied health visits, and needed his signature. He signed away happily, then looked at me, and asked how I was going. If I was sick at all. I said yes, I’d been sick since last Thursday, and it had gone through the throat on fire and the runny nose, to my chest. He said, “Come on in, let’s check you out” and ushered me into his office quite smartly. I was surprised, I didn’t have an appointment. Long story short, I was at 50% lung capacity and hadn’t realised. He’d asked me what my athsma was normally like, when I wasn’t having an attack like I was right then. I replied that I wasn’t having an attack, that my breathing had been like that all day. He was very, very concerned. I explained that my reason (there’s that word again!) for not using my ventolin was that, whenever I use it when I have a headcold, the ventolin reacts badly with that nodule on my vocal cords, and I end up with laryngitis for AGES. The last time, it took over 6 weeks to clear. And as a 0.7FTE teacher, I can’t afford to lose my voice.

He said, “Just imagine if you got to the stage where you’re down to only 30%, and you’re in the shower, with all the humidity, trying to get air in, and then something triggered an attack. I’d hate to think what might happen.” Which made me think. Seeing as my husband regularly works a ridiculous-number-of-hours-week, I’m primary care-giver to my three gorgeous cherubs. And I would hate them to be traumatised by one of them finding me curled up on the floor of the bathroom, turning blue, gasping for air, at 10pm at night [not to mention I couldn’t afford the therapist fees], so I reluctantly agreed. Laryngitis versus death. I guess one is infinitely preferable to the other.

I was amused, initially, at how ‘serious’ it all was… until it occurred to me that having only 50% lung capacity was kinda like I’d been walking around and doing stuff with just one lung. So I did as the doc suggested. I bought my own Peak Flow meter (my God, those things are expensive!!!) and have been diligently taking my meds (so much for the ‘drowsy’ side effects; I’ve had insomnia all week) and my stats have slowly risen from the 240 which I blew Monday afternoon, and the low of 150 that I got to on Monday night, back up to the 340 mark. Which is good. Someone of my height should be blowing at around 480, apparently, so I’m getting there.

So yes, death has preoccupied me a little. This morning though, I’m more thinking about pain. Because for the first time in a few weeks, I did my Krav Maga session yesterday morning. And boy, oh boy, am I feeling it today!

Have a great week, dear reader!

— KRidwyn

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#blogjune Life Random thoughts

Time flies…

… when you’re having fun. Or so they say. But my days are FLYING past (I can’t believe it’s been a week since #blogjune finished) and I’m not entirely sure that it’s because I’m having fun. So does that mean, then, that if I *were* having fun, that the days would be going past even faster than they seem to be right now? I wonder…

I’ve been doing some intensive decluttering of my house over the past couple of weeks. A truckload (yes, a truck was involved!) of un-used stuff has been donated, and the rubbish bins have been full-to-overflowing the last few pick-ups. And there’s still more to go 🙁

Moving three children, with their stuff, out of three bedrooms, has certainly been an exercise in patience! But it’s been a needed activity, and I’m glad I’m sorting through items that had been ‘stored’ (read: undealt with) for several years – with some items, over a decade! And my runny nose is back, courtesy of all the dust… but I’m excited that in the not-too-distant future, the cherubs will be back in their own rooms again, with a LOT less stuff, and the twenty-year-old carpet will be replaced with easy-t0-keep=clean-and-dust-free, tiles 🙂

Yes!!!

Have a great day, dear reader 🙂

-KRidwyn

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#blogjune Life Review

Over for another year..

Hello again, dear reader.

This marks the final post for my 2015 #blogjune journey. It’s been different to what I had expected. I had *hoped* that I’d be able to post every day. But, just as in the last five years, that never happened. I still managed 30 posts – but because several days had two or more posts in them. And this post marks the 112th post in the #blogjune category – and that sounds pretty impressive to me 🙂

So, to recap for 2015:

1. On the relationship between libraries, teaching and vocal nodules I lamented my not-going-to-Library-volunteering-due-to-laryngitis day

2. Keeping it at bay – the laryngitis, that is – related my happiness at getting so much editing done the day before, and also re-discovering the five (count them! 5!) folders of research that I’d done for a historical novel ten years ago, before Miss10 came along

3. Looking backwards, looking forwards referred to my experiences with #blogjune (cherubs traditionally picking up vomiting bugs during the first week of June) and my excitement about the #WritingRace I attend every Wednesday evening.

4. So I succumbed – Laryngitis got me, finally. It was the choir rehearsals that did it, I tell you!

5. Ask me why I’m happy – Hubby finished his CPA studies!

6. So it happened again – I was *so* hoping to get away with a vomit-free first week of #blogjune. But Miss7 changed that. Sigh.

7. Smiling – while sick : my 41st birthday!

8. Grateful was a post thanking my peeps for all the birthday love – and I finished reading Stephen King’s On Writing 🙂

9 – 14. The next few posts were a series on how I parent. I regularly get comments on the good behaviour of my kids, so I thought I’d blog about why. Things like Rewards First, Stuff Costs Money (understanding the value of things), Set Expectations, Consistency is Key, Make Milestones Memorable and finished it with a post on Mummy: my kids’ perspective

15. This Saturday looked ahead to the Krav Maga grading I was to sit that weekend

16. whoops – where I realised that I’d missed a day of blogging. My first for the month. So I’d made it through to day 15 before misisng a day! Happy with that 🙂

17. Predicting the game – the State of Origin rugby league match, that’s pretty big on the east coast of Australia during June. And I got it right 🙂

18. Training – Miss10 had been giving me back massages all week, possibly in response to the hard training I was doing preparing for my grading. Which was absolutely beautiful!

19. On dreams – I wonder what “being suffocated by render” means?

20. I passed!!! (Still shaking my head in disbelief, actually…)

21. Sabriel – my thoughts on the Garth Nix novel of the same name, which I’d read that afternoon. Being unable to do much else but lie prone, of course!

22. Conversations with my younger children – in which both Miss7 and Mr6 surprised me.

23. Hat-less: a selfie. These are rare. But I felt that my first day without-a-hat since shaving my head for #WorldsGreatestShave back in March was reason enough to grin and bear that rear-facing camera…

24. four days behind  because I was! And my reason why…

25. On socks and sewing – in which I recounted hopeful improvements in my ‘school socks’ system, and also my woeful sewing skills

26. sore – Some furniture was moved in preparation for the laying of tiles which had been delivered – which we had just discovered were the wrong tiles! (Am still seething over this one…)

27. Feedback from beta-readers – my take on the feedback I’ve received on my book to date

28. Tiles – part 2 : situation resolved (we can but hope) where the correct tiles will apparently be delivered next week…

29. Reading time – where I got to the bottom of why Mr6 refuses to read certain words

30. Over for another year – this one that’s you’re reading right now, the recap post where I’ve reminisced on the events of the past month.

Thanks for reading, and here’s wishing you a lovely day, as always!

— KRidwyn

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#blogjune my novel-in-progress Reading

Feedback from beta-readers

So I wrote a book, edited it, and gave it to some people to read. This was both exciting and scary! It was just over 25,000 words; an adventure story aimed at children aged 7 – 10. I’ve since had feedback from some of my beta-readers. One member of my writing group gave the manuscript to her two nieces. The seven-year-old wandered off after a few chapters, but the ten-year-old loved it, took some of it to school and showed her teacher – who also really liked it. I like that sort of feedback! Another member of the group gave me really detailed feedback on multiple aspects. This was more than I had expected, and incredibly helpful. He also made me laugh with this comment: “You write short sentences. My average sentence has 25 words. Yours has eight.” Another group member asked if he’d counted them; apparently he’d run the manuscript through a computer program. I didn’t even know that these existed!

Then again this morning, I spent a few hours with another of my beta-readers. A retired lecturer in Creative Writing, who gave me some intensive feedback. As in, two hours on just a couple of chapters. Which was brilliant! Mentally exhausting, but fantastic nonetheless.  And this afternoon, a lady who I aspire to be just like, is planning to spend the next three hours curled up on her couch with my manuscript. She was looking forward to it, and had set aside the time – this time, this afternoon – weeks ago, because she knew she could have some interrupted time to herself, and that’s what she wanted to spend it doing.

I’m really very blessed to have people in my life who are so supportive! I just hope that my little story is worthy of their time! 🙂

And to you, dear reader, I wish for you a lovely, lovely day.

Thanks for stopping by!

— KRidwyn

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#blogjune Life Random thoughts

On socks and sewing

I hate school socks. With an absolute passion. They are probably the one item that gets my hackles up the quickest. Sometimes I feel like school socks – especially the socks that get worn with a sports uniform rather than a formal uniform – are the absolute bane of my life.

‘What on earth?’ I can hear you thinking. ‘If socks are the biggest thing that she has to worry about, then omg she has it SOOOOOO freaking easy!’

And yes, I understand. I’d think exactly the same thing. And, to put it into perspective, sports socks aren’t REALLY the absolute bane of my life. I can’t think of what *is* the bane of my life, but socks probably isn’t it. They just make me mad.

It wasn’t always so. When it was my turn (many years ago now) to wear school socks, they were never a problem. It’s only been since my three cherubs have needed them, that the issue has raised its omg-I-hate-these-(insert swear word here)-school-socks head.

Let me explain, as I think my lack-of-sleep-addled brain is hindering me here.

I have three children: Miss10, Miss7 and Mr6. They wear a sports uniform three days per week, and a formal uniform the other two days. Now the formal uniform socks are white for girls, and grey for boys, so there isn’t too much difficulty sorting those out after my thrice-weekly wash. But the sports socks are the same for both boys and girls. And each of my children has three pairs, meaning that somewhere in my house there are 18 identical-looking (but not identical sized) socks.

The problem occurs because I’m not as vigilant with sock monitoring as I should be. I mean seriously, who wants to be seen to be the sock policeman! But most days, I turn into one without ever wanting to be.

I thought I has solved the problem around the middle of last year, when I bought three lingerie bags, one for each child. And because ‘lingerie’ is too hard a word to pronounce, we call them ‘mesh bags’ in my house.

So the idea was, whenever socks, singlets, or undies came off little bodies, they were deposited straight into the appropriate mesh bag. Tied up the top prior to washing (because those silly little zips broke during their very first trip through my washing machine) and then through the dryer, and then unpacked by the relevant owner. You’d think that would work, right?

Yeh. I thought so too. 

The trouble is, the mesh bags – when they *do* get used by children – are also identical. Can you see where I’m going with this? Socks, undies, singlets all get mixed up. Still.

Yes, now the majority of all singlets, socks and undies are all (usually) in one of three places, but the problem of accident sock-swapping remains… and not every sock necessarily makes it into a bag in the first place.

Add to that, the fact that it’s generally somewhere around the ’90 seconds before we need to be leaving’ that a child realises that they have only one sports sock – and that on a Tuesday morning – and my blood pressure reaches boiling point in zero seconds flat.

So yesterday afternoon. the kids and I went to Spotlight. They each chose a ribbon, and I used my majorly un-phenomenal sewing skills to make the mesh bags into drawstring bags. Finished the last this morning. 

 

Also yesterday, I received my patch for passing last week’s Krav Maga grading. (Yippee!) 

  
but I guess that means that there’s more sewing ahead 🙁

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#blogjune Random thoughts teaching Work

four days behind…

And I was so proud of how I’d been going with #blogjune this year, too! I guess I hadn’t really realised just how incredibly busy I would be this week. And how little time I’d get to blog. And I’m sad about that.

On paper, this past week seemed a fairly normal week. Sure, I’d have our school’s semester one performance night on Thursday night, but then I’d have Friday off, so I’d be able to recuperate while the kids were at school, and get myself ready for the two weeks of school holidays 🙂

But the reality didn’t match my expectations. Two days of sports carnivals and not-as-helpful-as-I-would-have-liked colleagues meant that although I had *planned* that the performance program order was finalised by Tuesday 9am, so that programs could be written, printed, photocopied, and the powerpoint made… in reality, the program order was only finalised at 12.45pm on Thursday. Dealing with this caused numerous headaches – and the sleepless nights caused by a sick child, and stress over other work issues didn’t make things easier.

Cue swearing and throwing of inanimate objects at other inanimate objects,  (discreetly, of course, where there was noone within earshot, no witnesses, and no harm came to any of the inanimate objects involved,) and a crazy-busy period between 12.45pm and 4pm on Thursday where I managed to get an insanely huge amount of work done WHILE running a choir rehearsal then two Year 3 lessons where the classes were learning and playing recorder (and, of course, fielding several phone calls during this time too) and also collecting two children from their various excursions that had happened that day, and getting Mr6 off to a doctor appointment with Hubby while Miss10 also decided to do a disappearing act on both Hubby and I… just thinking about it, two days later, makes me shake my head and wonder how on earth it all managed to happen! Still, it did, and by 5.45pm, Miss10 and Miss7 and I were fed, ready, and they had also helped me to set up the venue (including supper area, of course, and it was at this point that I realised that I had NO tea, coffee, milk or sugar organised. Whoops.) Cue more swearing (inside my head because students and parents were arriving for the 6pm performance) and some immensely helpful parents, and then it was 6.02 and I was on stage, welcoming everyone to our major evening for Semester One.

Home and collapse by 11pm. But you know those nights when you have so much adrenalin you can’t sleep? That.

And then Hubby couldn’t do the school run on Friday, so the kids stayed underfoot all day. But 95 square metres of tiles *did* get delivered at 5.15pm that day, ready for laying starting 7am this coming Monday, so from then til this minute, I’ve been attempting to empty 95 square metres of furniture out of my house so that the tiles can be laid. And that particular task hasn’t been anywhere near as successful as I’d like it to have been.

So. Four days late for my 24 of June #blogjune entry. Whoops. But I think my excuse is valid, yes?

Have a great day, dear reader!

— KRidwyn

 

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#blogjune momentous events

Conversations with my younger children…

Yesterday, we went out for breakfast. Mooloolaba Surf Club – breakfast overlooking the water. All you can eat. And the food is always yummier if you’re the one not preparing it or washing up, don’t you find?

Miss7 decided to serve herself fruit salad. She ate some rockmelon, gushing, “This is my favourite fruit of all time! I love rockmelon just sooooooooo much!”

I looked at her. (We rarely have rockmelon in the house, because I’m the only one who eats it.) “Really?” I asked “Since when?”

She paused in her munching, and thought about it for a few moments. Then she turned to me, all seriousness, and said “Since I was six.”

It was hard to keep a straight face, but I managed. I think.

Mr6’s conversation, immediately after breakfast, left a different kind of feeling. He took my hand, looked into my eyes, and said, “Mummy?”

“Yes, my sweet?”

“I’m autistic.”

“Yes,” I said, my eyes tearing up. “Yes, my sweet. You are.”

It was a bittersweet meal.