Raining Cats, Dogs and Maltesers

Mother Nature wasn’t very happy yesterday. In fact, I’d go as far as to say she was pretty pissed off. If I was a guy I’d probably say it was a case of PMT, but I’m not, so I’ll just hazard a guess and say she was having one hell of a bad hair day.

Whatever the reason, Ms Nature certainly gave 2 fingers up to anyone in Perth who’s been moaning about the weather. Or more specifically, the 40 degrees of constant heat with not a drop of rain since November.

Now I do appreciate that to people in wetter isles, England lets say, the idea of nearly 5 months without rain might seem like something of a dream. But let me tell you, it’s not. When a total lack of precipitation is teamed up with temperatures more suited to melting iron ore, it can make for some pretty uncomfortable living. Not to mention a rather dry, dusty, brown and monotonous landscape.

So that said, I think it would be quite safe to assume that rather a lot of people in Perth (and some extremely dehydrated plants) were rather looking forward to the dry spell breaking. And break it did. With bells on.

With barely enough time to drag the dog through the fly screen, the blue sunny sky disappeared and the hailstones arrived. Hailstones the size of Maltesers, pouring out of the sky so fast you’d think God had accidently left his freezer door open, and a passing angel had carelessly tipped it over. We were lucky only to get Maltesers, in the city they were apparently the size of golf balls.

Then came the rain. Or should I say the downpour, pelting in at us from at every angle but up. Within minutes our garden was several inches under water, and there was, what could only be described, as a flash flood going past the end of our drive.

Being me, of course I tried to take some photos of the hailstones stacking up 9 inches deep at our back door. But the moment I opened the door to take the picture, the bloody dog shot off into the garden. How stupid is he? He see’s, what to him must have looked like a Noah’s Ark moment, and he still decides to go out for a quick dig in the sand.

Needless to say once he went out I refused to let him, or his soggy wet fur, back in again. He may be of the non-smelling variety of pooches, but even a soaking wet Spoodle has something of a whiff about it. So I hardened my heart and held my resolve – right up until the point where my daughter stood sobbing at the window, looking down at a pathetic excuse for a fur ball, trying to pin himself flat against the wall with his damp ears plastered around his snout. Two clean towels and a vigorous blow dry later and he was back inside and on the rug. I hope he’s learned his lesson, that nothing is worth the pain of a dig in the hail.

Dumb dogs aside, in the sort of weather that heralds the start of Armageddon the average person normally chooses to stay indoors, steer clear of windows and turn up the TV. Sadly I’m not average, so I grabbed the car keys, swam to the car and set off with oars at the ready.

Of course as the sky turned pitch black overhead and the odd branch blew past like tumbleweed, it did cross my mind that this might not be the most sensible decision in the world. But really I had no choice. My son, who isn’t partial to loud noises and the car wash at the best of times, was stranded at his nursery 8 minutes down the road. Even if he’d had the foresight to take his water wings with him that day, I very much doubted he’d have managed the journey alone.

“The clouds are very angry” he told me, over and over all the way home.

My poor husband arrived back quite a bit later than usual that night.  Something to do with me having his car, the train tracks being flooded, every cab being taken and the buses being fit to burst. I’m not sure it necessarily helped, when I pointed out that if he had had his car that day, he’d no doubt still be stuck in the bumper-to-bumper traffic, as the world and their wet dog struggled to leave work.

Needless to say the news teams and anchormen (I would be P.C. and say anchorwoman, but all the women sound like men anyway) were practically salivating with joy on the TV last night. Finally, something worth reporting in Perth that didn’t involve a drunken AFL player, a misplaced kangaroo and a runaway shopping trolley on the freeway.

As I know I’m rather prone to the odd bit of exaggeration (creative license and all), I’ve added the pictures below to show that for once, Perth really did have something happen to get excited about.

lylyl

A bad case of wind

I mentioned in the previous post we’ve been having storms here in Perth, but really the word ‘storm’ doesn’t do it justice. It’s been more like a series of typhoons, cyclones and hurricanes all rolled up into one. Most days it’s wet and windy, and there isn’t a long enough break between the rain to even take the dog to the park. I did try yesterday, but I had to flatten myself around a tree trunk as soon as I got there, and then wait for the horizontal rain to give up and go away.

The stupid thing was I had looked at both my raincoat and umbrella on the way out the door, and decided, that with the sun shining directly above the house and the nearest dangerous looking cloud out on the horizon,  I’d go without. Apparently a rain cloud can cover ground a lot faster than I can.

So this is my 3rd winter in Perth, and without wanting to sound like a whinging Pom, they are definitely getting worse. I don’t know whether it’s global warming that’s causing weather patterns to shift around, but the climate and seasons are refusing to stick to the guidelines. Australian summers are getting hotter and drier, winters are getting windier and wetter, and the Gods of Thunder and Lightening are definitely way out of control.

The first of the big storms came a few weeks ago. A Monday to be precise, the day that my son’s tonsils were due to go under the chopping block. Instead, I was staggering around the house losing my breakfast to gastric flu, my daughter was in bed, busy retching into a bucket and emitting a series of very dramatic moans and groans, and my husband had just flown to Sydney on business.

Setting off to collect my son from nursery, I lowered myself carefully into the car (fast movements are not nausea’s best friend) and went to open the garage door. It went up half way. It came back down again. I pushed the button again. It went up a quarter of the way. It came back down again. Now of course common sense should have told me not to push my luck for a third time. But I did. It was cold, wet, dark and blowing a gale. There wasn’t a chance in hell I was going to walk to the nursery to collect him.

So I pushed the button. Once again it went up half way – and then stopped. This would have been bad enough on its own, but of course I’m not that lucky. A massive gust of wind then swept up the driveway catching the garage door on the way, it snapped it off the rollers and then buckled it in half. The twisted hunk of metal than dropped back down – to within an inch of the cars roof, with me in it.

Now I don’t want to come across as a useless, blubbering woman who falls apart in times of trouble, but this really was the very last straw in an incredibly long day involving a high temperature and a toilet bowl. I did attempt to use my very limited strength to push the door back up to an upright position, but unsurprisingly, the door had other ideas. So with the metal rippling away in the wind next to me, I called a friend and sobbed out my tale of woe.

Lucky for me she saved the day, collecting stranded son and sending round further reinforcements, in the form of her husband who helped me to tether the door up with ropes. That night I laid in bed listening to it banging away and imaging how much damage it would potentially cause if it broke free and took off the roof of the house across the road.

3 weeks on and the storms have returned to try and finish off the garage door, which is still roped up and wedged shut with ladders. Trees in the garden are bending like blades of grass and rubbish bins are flying up and down the street like tumbleweed. I feel like Dorothy, minus the safety blanket of a pair of sparkly red shoes.

So the other night my husband came in from work and shut the door. An hour later the wind picked up and blew it back open again. Every other door in the house slammed shut, the roof hatch disappeared up into the eaves and all of the AC covers in the ceilings went with them. Trying to shut the front door again was the tricky bit.  With a cyclone now picking up pace by the door mat, the front of the house had turned into something of a wind tunnel, and we couldn’t get the hall door open to get out there. I half expected the front of the house to take off into the night sky, leaving us hanging onto a door handle below.

The two off us finally pushed the door open and slammed the front door shut, but not before the length of the hallway was covered in hailstones and the coats on the hall stand had all had a wash.

“And that is why I always lock the door when I shut it” I said.

With no sign of this bad weather letting up anytime soon, you have to wonder whether Mother Nature has a real axe to grind with this part of the world. Perhaps she’s ticked off with some Aussie half wit calling her a Sheila, or maybe she’s just having a shocking case of PMT. Either way, until we lower the excess on our insurance I wish she’d air some of her grievances elsewhere and give our badly built house a break.

Planes, trains and watery accidents

My 2 1/2 year old son has been undergoing toilet training for about 6 weeks now, and I have to say he’s doing a lot better than I ever expected him to. Boys are, after all, meant to be a lot slower on the uptake when it comes to the learning about when to poop and pee, and when to clench and hold.

Of course there have been accidents. One next to the sofa, one in the bedroom where he shut the door on himself and couldn’t get out, and a handful around the bathroom – normally as a result of him misjudging the volume of wee in his bladder and shooting off the potty before he’s completed the job.

Trying to shoo the dog away as I re-dress, empty, bleach and wipe is the hardest part of all.

Unfortunately my sons days at nursery do set him back sometimes. Whether it’s the excitement of finger painting or the 15 or so other kids queuing up for the potty, some days I go to collect him and am met with a bag of wet clothes and a rather nasty smelling teddy. The washing machine never had such a good work out for so few clothes. One day, when he had gotten through all 3 sets of spare clothes in his Bob the Builder backpack, I arrived to find him wafting around the room wearing nothing more than a kimono from the dressing up box. That was one of those occasions when you wish you had a camera to hand.

As with many things in life, thinking about doing something is often worse than actually doing the deed. The very idea of replacing nappies with pants on a leaking child is one such time. I found the only way to really stay one step of the game in the beginning was to spend every 4th minute asking him if he needed to go, and then ferrying him backwards and forwards to the potty, armed with 16 books and a thermos of tea (for me). It was monotonous and repetitive, but it did the trick. After a while, and probably because he got so damn sick of being asked, he started to tell  me when he needed to go. Or rather he’d screech “Poo Mummy” as he scurried towards me, with one hand behind his back clutching his bottom.

Seeing that I would drop everything and leap to attention when he needed to go, he quickly realised that the whole process could be manipulated into something of a game. I’d run to get him to the bathroom, peel off the layers, sit him down and then he’d laugh. “No Poo Mummy”. Hmmmmm. That one soon wears very thin, particularly when you’re in the shower, eating your breakfast or halfway up a mountain..

A Blue Mountain to be exact. Let me explain.

We’ve just got back from spending a week in Sydney. A week in Sydney in the rain. Who knew it would be so cold, or so wet at this time of year. Everyone but us apparently. Typically, the weather forecast for the week changed upon our arrival. It went from sun and a spot of cloud every day, to rain with a touch of rain every day.

Damp weather aside, holidaying with children is always a test – a test of a parent’s patience, stamina and will to live. Air travel in particular can be stressful at the best of times (something I wrote about before),  but throw in a couple of kids and several tonnes of ‘can’t get by without you’ luggage and you can find yourself half way to a nervous breakdown at 30,000 feet.

It’s always hard to know how your children will react to leaving the ground in a vacuum packed can. My son wasn’t amused. At all. Watching the aeroplanes through the terminal window – great fun. Walking down the air-slip onto the plane – not so fun. Sitting in his seat for take off – simply not going to happen.

So what does he call out in a desperate bid for freedom? “Poo Mummy”.

Yes, just what all the passengers around us wanted to hear. I’m sure some actually recoiled and held their nose in fear. So, with the fasten seat belt sign lit up and the plane doors already closed, he was whisked up the aisle to the toilet with potty in hand. Did he need to go? Of course he didn’t, but it would have been a pretty brave parent to take the risk.

And so followed a week of untimely potty stops. In the bushes in front of the Opera House. In the undergrowth next to the museum. Sat inside the land train going around Darling Harbour. Behind the seal enclosure at Taronga zoo. On a grassy knoll overlooking Botany Bay. On the train into the shops, and around the back of the Police Station in the CBD. There was no where he didn’t go. And there was no where we could go without a potty, wet wipes and spare clothes at the ready. It really is amazing how the bowels of a small child can shape and dictate your day.

The mountains, as previously discussed, were probably the worst. When he decided he needed to go, the rain was coming in at us diagonally from both sides – with the force of Niagara Falls. We happened to be out on a nature trail at that moment, trying to take at least one photo of the view to prove we had enjoyed the grey and misty scenery. We ended up in the car pack, huddled over him with umbrellas, as he sat on the ground to give it a go. Did anything materialise?  Nope, not even with the encouraging sound of gushing water hitting his parent’s heads.

Same story in the Jenolan caves, and then twice on the way back up the mountain at night, in thick and surprisingly spooky fog. At times like this it is definitely tempting to ignore the little voice from the back seat, but the car seat was hired and the excess for damage to the car was $3000. No pee is worth that much. This time he sat perched on his potty in the boot of the car, smiling up at us, as if it were all perfectly normal.

All pit stops aside, the biggest and most costly accident that occurred during the week, was not by my toddler, but by my husband instead. We were on the ferry traveling from Circular Quay to Darling Harbour, and had decided to sit outside in the spitting rain, to take some pictures of the Opera House as we went past.

Somehow, and don’t ask me how, the camera leaped out of his pocket, dropped onto the ferry floor and slid 2 foot across to the edge of the boat. As it happened (does it ever happen any other way?), there was a gap in the side of the boat. About, oh lets say, camera sized in width. The only bloody hole, I might add, that there was down our side of the boat.

The camera then proceeded to slide through the hole and sit on the outside rim. I’m sure the camera lenses winked at me. We both looked at it in disbelief – I know I was certainly wondering what the hell is it doing down there. Having a child on my lap I couldn’t move. My husband, who swears it all happened in seconds, apparently has the reaction times of a snail on speed.

PLOP, over it went. All of our photos sank right to the bottom of the harbour. I’m not embarrassed to say I burst into tears. My husband did what any intelligent man in the same situation should do. He kept very quiet and looked at the floor. After several minutes of watching my tears mixing with the rain, my daughter helpfully piped up.

“Now you’ve lost all of my photos.” Followed by. “This wouldn’t have happened if we’d sat inside you know.” I believe she received quite a glare.

We all left the ferry in silence. Even my son knew better than to say he needed a poo. Half an hour later, when we were standing underneath the sharks inside the aquarium, my husband ventured to speak to me. “Well obviously we’ll buy a new camera tomorrow.”

And so we did.

He did feel marginally better when told in the camera shop that he was the 3rd person that week to drop their camera into the water. Had our home contents insurance actually covered us for the camera outside of the house, then he might have redeemed himself a little more. But of course, despite trotting along to the Police Station to report it’s loss (hence the potty stop), it didn’t. Now had he dropped it into a mug of tea at home, we’d be quids in – go figure.

The new camera is shatterproof, waterproof, snow-proof and husband-proof. That of course means it comes with a manual thick enough to sit on at the breakfast bar. By the next holiday I might just have worked out which setting goes with which, and how to use the ‘Beauty Mode’. Till then, it’s safe to say my dearest husband will be remaining on the other side of the lens, and paying for his act of clumsiness through the public humiliation on this blog.

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One of those nights

Last night was one of those nights that just makes you want to crawl under the duvet and sleep for a week.

It was one of those nights when your children don’t want to eat what you have cooked and you wonder why you bothered in the first place. It was one of those nights where their bedtime simply can not come soon enough, and then when they are in bed,  you are faced with a counter stacked ceiling high with a days worth of dirty plastic bowls, plates, spoons and beakers. It was one of those nights, when you do summon up the last remaining ounce of energy to empty and reload the dishwasher, you find that it never actually did it’s job properly the last time around.

Yes, it was definitely one of those nights.

So lets get past the bit where I had to hand wash all of the crockery, just to get yesterdays dry, crusted on food off. And lets get past the massive tidy up operation, namely finding, regrouping and re-boxing 40 Thomas the Tank Engine books, re-parking a ride on fire engine in it’s respective corner, rounding up 6 cars (of varying size and spec) that have been hidden behind each cushion on the sofa, and trying to contain at least half the contents of my daughters bedroom, which was by this point, now strewn across the entire dining table, and beyond.

I should say that this type of military operation is all pretty normal stuff in our house, or indeed I imagine, in any house that is inhabited by humans measuring in at 5 feet or less.

Yes, lets get past all of that. There I was, at the end of such a day – a day when for every minute the clock ticked forward, it ticked back 2. I was, to put it mildly, rather tired. So, after spending my allotted ‘me time’ washing my hair, I re-emerged to get on with what was left of the day, namely eating, putting my feet up and watching ‘Greys Anatomy’.

Unfortunately, but hardly surprisingly, this was not to be. Before my soup could even hit the bowl, never mind make it into the microwave, my daughter appeared, scratching her head and complaining of an itch.

Now she had said the same thing the last 2 nights, but being the sometimes unsympathetic and always overtired mother that I am, I had sent her back to bed. The first night I gave her hair the once over and then gave her a spoonful of Claratyne, for the allergy itch that she always seems to get when she doesn’t want to go to sleep. The second night I just sent her back to bed.

Last night however a little voice (that would be the nagging voice sent to reprimand lazy parents) told me to check her head again. So I did. And ewwwwwww. There were nits, or head lice if you want to use the now more politically correct terminology, marching across her head.

Now having a child who has friends who sometimes have nits, this shouldn’t have come as such a shock. In the last 7 years however, she has somehow managed to sail, completely un-infested through every outbreak at nursery, kindergarten and school. I guess I had put this lucky streak down to her either having super resistant hair, or just a very uninviting scalp.

Winning streak obviously over, all the lights came on, the torch came out and I was forced to be the adult. I quashed my inner squeamishness and picked through her hair, strand my strand, until they were all caught, found and squashed in a tissue. My husband had the, I would say, slightly nicer job of going out on the hunt for nit killing lotion.

As I oiked out the little critters I tried to hide them from my daughter, thinking it would upset her. I needn’t have worried. She was, I believe, actually quite chuffed to now be in the ‘I’ve Been Nitted Club’. Children are odd like that. If I’d given her the option she might well have opted to keep one as a pet. She would probably have named it Fluffy.

We on the other hand, spent the evening with an imaginary itch. When we did finally get to sit down and eat, our heads were coated in conditioner and our scalps were on the verge of bleeding, after such a vicious combing with the metal contraption provided.

Like I said, it really was one of those nights. The sort of night you can well do without, especially when followed by one of those days.

Needless to say my daughter is having a hair cut next week, something as she rather smugly pointed out, that she had been asking me for for weeks. Yippee. After the recent hair related fiasco’s with both my son and my dog, I just can’t wait to make it a hat trick.

litt

Here’s some handy INFO on nits, and how to kill the little blighters.

litt

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Bad fur day

Charlie is in the throes of a post haircut breakdown. Yesterday, he was forced to deal with a full back, sack and crack experience – canine style, and now he keeps coming face to face with a mirror, realising that he has lost half of his body size overnight, and then jumping back with a start. I am guessing by the way that he keeps skulking off to hide in his bed, that he isn’t exactly enamored with his new look. Something of a bad fur day in his eyes perhaps.

I can tell by the bewildered look in his eye that he is wondering exactly how he managed to shrink. I think perhaps he is scared tomorrow he will wake up and find he has halved again in size. He is certainly spending even more time than normal checking over and cleaning his manhood, probably making sure that at least that has been left intact. I can also tell that he is silently cursing us for letting it happen, and vowing never, ever to be lured into the car again.

Personally, I think he looks good. His fur is soft as a lamb, he is completely knot and dread-lock free and we can finally see his eyes again. He has also lost that whiff of warm dog badly needing a good wash and shampoo. Aside from him now looking like the lean, mean racing machine that he is, with the temperatures hitting 40 degrees, we have also prevented the strong possibility of him getting sun stroke and turning into a hot dog.

I know that he certainly had far more staying power in the sun when out this morning, and managed to last a whole 5 minutes before trying to climb into the basket under the pram to cool down. Granted he might also have been just trying to hide. Apparently dogs do get self conscious after a hair cut, and need a certain amount of reassurance that they still look cute and lovable. Charlie has certainly been displaying signs of extreme paranoia today. I don’t think it really helped matters when a Labrador did a double take on the way to the park. I’m sure he even snickered at Charlie as he walked past. I ask you, who knew dogs could be so bitchy in the playground.

I do feel for him at a time like this. I also remembered being given haircuts from hell at a young age, haircuts that basically altered my gender and left me looking as if my head was permanently tilted to one side. My mother used to corner me in the kitchen, brandishing a pair of hairdressing scissors in one hand and a bottle of water to spray me with in the other. Regardless of the time of year, or whether there was even snow on the ground, I was made to sit in the middle of the kitchen table – kept warm by just my underwear and a light coating of itchy hair.

While I never actually lost an eye or an ear, as threatened if I didn’t keep still, the memory of these hairy ordeals stays firmly with me. I am, as a result I believe, still incredibly nervous around  people bearing scissors and a comb. Actually anyone bringing hair orientated products in the vicinity of my head sets off alarm bells.

When I was about 14 or 15, my sister, a hairdresser in training, offered to perm my hair for me. While perms may well have been in fashion at the time, it was, in hindsight one of those ‘good ideas at the time’ that you later live to regret. It probably wouldn’t have been so bad if the perming lotion that we were using wasn’t located at the very back of the medicine cupboard. Or that it was called ‘Twinkie’ and was at least 10 years old – the faded price tag of 49p was a little bit of a giveaway on this front. Ignoring this we ploughed on, poured the stuff through my hair and then realised that, oh, dear, there wasn’t enough in the box to finish the job. It was by this time 9.30 at night, and I should add, well before the days of stores opening 24 hours a day.

My head was wrapped in a towel and we set out in the car to find a pharmacy. At this stage we both could see the funny side of the situation. An hour later the second batch was applied.  Half an hour later my hair was rinsed upside down over the bath. I don’t know if it was my sisters sharp intake of breath and uncontrollable giggling that alerted me, or the fact that I could no longer see my hair in front of my nose. I up-righted myself and looked in the mirror. Shirley Temple looked back at me, and we both screamed. I then forcibly removed my sister from the bathroom and sat sobbing on the loo seat as I tried to stretch my hair back to a decent length. I still shudder at the memory.

Of course these past traumas don’t stop me from subjecting my own son to the same ordeals, though at least I have the decency to take him to a professional and let him keep his clothes on.

I have to admit that this kindness didn’t always extend to Charlie. In the early days we did actually buy some cheap clippers from Kmart and try to do a DIY job. We stood him on top of a packing box and proceeded to shave him to within an inch of his life – and lets not forget it’s cats that have nine lives, not dogs. It wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t been quite so anal about getting it right. Every time I tried to tidy him up a bit, I ended up taking off a whole new layer of fur, and well, once you’ve done one leg,  you’ve got to do the other three to even him up a little.

I couldn’t really describe how he looked when we’d finished with him. Let’s just say we had brought out all of the worst traits of his part poodle breeding, and everyone laughed when they saw him.

So the next time we decided the fluff was getting bigger than the dog, we thought we should hang up the clippers and go find a pro. Of course finding a good dog groomer is actually a lot harder than you might imagine. And when I say good, I mean someone who doesn’t spend your dog home with bald patches and a bleeding nick on his stomach, where the skin was mistaken for fur and shaved right off. I should point out that this particular groomer did put a rather attractive blue bow around his neck in time for collection, so of course this more than made up for the fact that my dog was taken to task by Sweeney Todd and nearly scarred for life.

Yes, finding a good groomer is tricky. It’s not unlike (I imagine) trying to pin down an A-list hairdresser for a last minute appointment on Oscar night. So when you do find someone who knows her fur, it pays to hang on to them. My groomer also happens to work at my son’s daycare, so I figured I’m onto a winner there. If I trust her enough to keep my son fed, watered and alive when at nursery, I can certainly trust her enough to shave around my doggy’s balls. Or at least to shave around where they would have been, had they not been lopped off as a puppy. Poor thing, and they say “It’s a dog’s life”.

Anyway, you decide. Have we momentarily ruined his street cred, or saved him from boiling alive in his own juices?

ell.

Yes, that IS the same dog in both photos and not an anorexic looking twin. And yes, despite his emancipated looking frame, I can assure you that we do feed him. Well in fact. Very well.

Want to know more about Spoodles? Read this post… What is a Spoodle

well.

well.

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Day care dilemmas

Few things make me really mad, but this morning I was fuming. I had a run in with a business who tried to take my money without actually offering anything in return. Foolish people, they had no idea the lengths this family will go to, for the sake of $20.

Let me explain. Earlier in the year, after agonising about whether cutting the apron strings would stunt my son’s future development, and catapult him into therapy, I decided to put him into nursery for a few days every week and get back to work. Of course once the decision was made, despite knowing my daughter had gone into day care and survived to live another day, I was racked with guilt.

Guilt aimed at myself – over my obvious selfishness, and the guilt that comes from those silent accusations, radiating out from judgemental ‘earth’ mother types. You know the the sort. The mum’s who are happy to schedule their every waking minute around baby groups, Jolly Jingle music classes and ‘Beginners Russian for Babies’. They appear to spend every single day painting with scraps of string, making animals out of paper mache and mass producing trays of multi-coloured cup cakes.

These are the mother’s who make you feel like an unmaternal monster for daring to enjoy your life before children, and incredibly selfish for even suggesting you want one after. Hats off to you if you are built this way, but please, enough with the comments and tutting. To these people, I say why don’t you concentrate on your own finger painting children, and leave the welfare of my children to me.

I think it is safe to say that I am not such a mother. I never have been, and no amount of intensive craft training or raised eyebrows are going to turn me into one. I did the whole baby group thing the first time around, so when my son came along I was reluctant to go back. Those dreaded weekly meets became all about graphic stories of ruptured placentas, lengthily labours and a fiercely fought battle over who had prepared the best spread of food on the day. Chinese water torture has nothing on a baby group.

Not wanting to starve my son of any joy in his life, we did give Gymbaroo a go. Being much younger than the other performing toddlers in the class, he refused to jump through the hoops or even go up to cuddle teddy. He actually spent much of the time fighting to get of my lap and out of the door. By the end of the term, as I sat with gritted teeth through all the songs, I had to agree with his gut instinct. We made our bid for freedom, sadly never to return.

Of course I love to play with my son. We happily spend many hours building train tracks, re-potting tubs of play dough and reading the same book, over and over and over again. Mealtimes I could do without, but the rest I would never want to miss. But as much as I value this time, I also need to keep my brain ticking over. I need to have a few days where I’m not covered in cracker crumbs and knee deep in sand. I also have to earn a living and pay the bills.

Anyway, back to that guilt.

Eventually my paranoid state subsided and common sense prevailed. Helped along by a timely reminder about the importance of social skills, as my son attempted to scalp an unsuspecting friend who came to play.

With a decision made, I set around finding somewhere that he could go. I naturally went to the nursery with the best reputation, a family run business with a queue for places that ran out of the door. 3 months I was told, 4 at the tops. Fair enough I thought, if there are no places then it must be good. So I handed over the $20 registration fee and resigned myself to the wait.

Trouble is, patience isn’t really my thing though, so after a few days I thought I’d give the other nursery a go. This one didn’t have such a good reputation. ABC Learning Centre is a chain, with 1000′s of centres around the world, and an army of staff who probably aren’t all great. But with an open mind and the need to work looming over me,  I went along for a look. I was impressed with the reception my son and I received and he was given a place starting a few days later. As I said, patience just isn’t my thing.

Along we went on the first day, with teddy stuffed into a Bob the Builder bag so big, my son could have used it for a cot. Yes, he was a little bit teary at first, but not nearly as bad as me. I walked away that day, with my forked tail tucked into my jeans, went home and did nothing. I sat and worried, imagined the worst and then called 3 times before picking him up to bring him home for lunch. The next day was better, and by the 3rd he was fine. By the 5th day I was fine too, so decided I’d better stop calling up to check he wasn’t still howling at the gate for me. As if. All tears stopped when I walked away.

That was nearly 8 months ago now, and I have to say my son has never been happier. He helps pack his bag, climbs into the car and runs to go into the toddler room. His speaking has improved, he plays rather than ambushes and has even learned to sit still for more than 30 seconds at a time. He also sleeps better at night. Bingo!

Now back to the reason for my climbing blood pressure. In all this time, I have never heard so much as a peep from the other nursery, the one with the ‘excellent’ reputation and a waiting list longer than an IKEA store. Not once have they called to say there are still no spots or even to apologise for the delay. Nothing. So armed with the knowledge that other children have since been taken in, I went along today to ask for my $20 back. I saw no reason why they should keep my money simply for filing a piece of paper.

The owner, after admitting to already being asked the same thing by somebody else that day, said “No, the money was non-refundable.”

I don’t think so. If my son’s promised place had materialised, or I had even had a call, then yes, I would have agreed. But there wasn’t and they didn’t, and $20 is after all, still $20.

“Circumstances change” she tried to claim, “and we do have the best reputation in the area.”

“Well my circumstance didn’t change”, I replied, ” and I wouldn’t have paid and waited for a place that was never going to be there”.

“Fine”, she snapped back, slapping the $20 that she was for some reason holding, into my hand. “Take that then, and good luck to you.” She indicated to the door and I left, fuming. I can only presume that she thought I would need the good luck in finding another nursery who would take my son.

So there you go. Reputations are not all they are cracked up to be. If someone runs a child care centre like a cash register, and takes money from everyone who walks through the door, why would you ever want to entrust your child to such tender fleecing care. I think I’d rather spend every day covered in bits of sticky back plastic and smothered in PVA glue.

Finally, to all those mother’s who are made to feel like sending your child to day care is on a par with pushing them into a lions den, smothered in Bovril. I would say ignore what other people say. Just because you need to have a few days to yourself, whether to work, or think, or even sleep, it doesn’t mean you don’t love your child, care about their development or even enjoy spending time with them. It just means you need some time… to work, or think, or even sleep.

If that isn’t a good enough reason, then a recent study estimated that children who go to day care cut their risk of the most common type of childhood leukaemia by around 30%. Something to do with them building up their immunity to the small stuff, after spending their first year with a constant streaming nose and a face encrusted with snot.

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