Party pissa: My kind of party

The LGBB and I have handed out all her party invitations (except for a few who will get letterbox dropped shortly).

It started with "You can invite TEN. Only ten." She wanted a disco karaoke party. I know. Did you just groan and laugh at the same time like I did? Weighing up the ratio of room size:her ability to befriend any child, I knew I had to set a limit early. But I also had a feeling it wouldn't be just ten in the end. Despite her initial statement - "No boys" - I also kinda guessed she'd try and sneak some boys in to the list when she realised she wanted them here. It's a recording that's made its way in to her head via some other little girl's vocabulary. Lolly has plenty of boy friends. She just sometimes forgets. And I sometimes forget to encourage her not to forget.

I admit, I took the easy way out. I was thinking of the head count only. If she said she didn't want boys, then that would instantly make it easier to keep the numbers down. "Fine," I said two weeks ago. "No boys then." Not that my floors and walls are the most spot-free in the world, I didn't relish the thought of a huge number of children descending in a party-frenzied furore on my house and furniture.

Fast forward to last weekend, after much gnashing of teeth and also realising that not only did she want to invite three boys from kinder, she simply HAD to (evidenced by the writhing on the floor holding her stomach as if she was trying to digest her own bad acting) have her cousins here as well, my little girl was not able to be convinced. I was secretly very glad that she had found her own way through it and realised she did want her boy counterparts to come and share in the fun.

Initially, I tried to advise her we could have a "family dinner" with her cousins and two of her other family-friends boys - make a night of it at a pizza place, I thought, which sort of helped smooth over my own social etiquette-bound self (I assumed all along that her beloved boys would not want to come to what was being touted by Lolly as a "disco princess fairy dance party"). And I wrote the five boys' names down and explained to her that they probably wouldn't want to come, and I talked up how fun a pizza night with her and them would be. She was confused. She wanted to invite them. It was boof-head ME who fed the stereotype.

It was sorted. For a few days. Lolly got to work drawing a poster in honour of her own birthday. It had balloons on it and pieces of pizza (spelled "pissa", which was, very much, a "pisser" to me and her Dad) with smiley faces. She was extra specially careful to ensure lines went from the pizza slices to each of the boys' names. So they wouldn't miss out.

Pardy piss-aaaaaa. Whassuuuuuup!

It broke my heart a little bit. And I gave myself a verbal shake and said "Wake up, ninny!" She was showing me in plain scribbles that her kids were segregated. For no real reason she could understand. I mean, who can be bothered listening to their mother crap on about how hard it is to keep the house clean? Right?

So the list grew. My limit blew out to fifteen. "Okay," I said, "FIFTEEN... but that is IT," I said.

And she nodded and did her wide-mouthed old-soul matron grin and presented me with 22 names. Off the top of her head. It was pitiful, the indecision over who she had to leave off if she absolutely HAD to invite another. In the end, I couldn't do it to her. She is the sort of kid, I suspect, who like me would take in any number of strays (people, animals, she doesn't discriminate).

After negotiations were finalised, I wrote a number down and slid the paper across the kitchen bench to her in silence, nodding suggestively - This is a good number, take the deal - and she nodded back at me. We settled. We're idiots like that. She doesn't even know what I was parodying. But she thinks I'm a cracker crack-up. Whatever.

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

A post from the incomparable Mrs Woog has stopped me in my tracks this morning. It reminded me of the message I was unwittingly sending to my daughter and I was relieved that I had not encouraged her to go with her no-boys rule. Go read this: Performing Princesses.

I'm not saying I don't think boys *want* to dance or come to a fairy/princess/girly-girl party, but I am saying I sometimes get so blinkered that I just expect they'll not want to come. I almost supported my daughter's decision not to invite who she truly wanted to be here. Based on gender. When it wasn't really what she wanted anyway, it was what she had heard in "the playground."

I am lining up for a smack. Take a number. I'll bend over shortly.

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

Nineteen invites are going out today. Eight of them are for boys. I came home from distributing them into the parents' folders, made a cup of tea and sat down to discover that post. I read it and felt humbled and confirmed.

Please retract my Mother of the Year nomination

I'm so proud! Look at the words sounded out - "SOBH" for sorry, "ADICST" for asked... It's so exciting to see our child's expression in writing!!

This here is the Sorry Note that I was presented with most forlornly (and not a little manipulatively by my tongue-in-cheek smirking) four year-old daughter yesterday.

The events leading up to Sorrygate were your usual Sunday afternoon home life antics:

Mum and Dad, in kitchen, trying to work out about half a dozen things at once. Also hoping desperately to hear each other over the din of their dear-born, making as much noise as a classroom of roudy children on a Friday afternoon. Mum snaps, says to child, "Oh for heaven's sake, would you PLEASE go and find something to do! Just for ten minutes!" Child walks away, arms by sides, not swinging, shoulders slumped and feet dragging ever so slightly for added effect.

At moments like these, I do not go after my child and placate. I can't. I have to give it a few minutes at least and then, more often than not, I go down to her and sidle in while she's playing. It's rare, for she is usually with me, nagging to be entertained, every minute of the day when she is here. We are still trying fervently to explain that there are days, particularly during the long stretches of weekends, where she needs to learn to amuse herself using her own imagination. That it's important she does this.

Yada-yada. We're still hoping it'll sink in.

So then. The note comes. By way of a morose-looking (but ever so cheeky still) LGBB, presenting it to me and telling me it says:

Mum. Sorry I asked for food. (name). Happy birthday.

Well just plunge a knife in my heart and be done with it, why don't you! (By the way, it's not my birthday, it's just something the LGBB likes to offer, it's her version of "Have a nice day!") Asking me for food, were you? How was I to know, when I was listening to another adult and trying to make a coherent reply and push that little nagging voice to the side for thirty seconds?! How was I to know that you needed food so badly that you had to ask for it while jumping and jiggling and writhing around as though you'd already eaten a bowl full of jellybeans and downed a litre of red cordial?!

Grrrrrr.

The rest of the afternoon passed by relatively peacefully. And I am just quietly ever so proud of our girl. Her first 'letter' to someone! Pity it was to highlight my apparent shortcomings as a parent.....

Stream of Consciousness Saturday

Brought to you by The LGBB & Me...

‎"Let's watch a movie yeah let's watch Tinkerbell again not a Daddy boring movie that nobody else wants to watch come ON Mummy you come too let's watch a movie YEAH! let's go, girls *grabs nearest Barbies* C'mon! Let's roll!"


Must teach my daughter not to say everything she thinks. I'm breathless just listening to it.

Saw like an eagle

The LGBB is in possession of a new book. A brilliant little Scanimation hard page book called "GALLOP!" They are fantastic and this one had become a firm favourite even before the end of the first day Daddy brought it home for her.

On reading it to her tonight, Lolly decided to do the actions for Steve's benefit instead of climbing into bed.

Steve: "Can you.... gallop like a horse?"
The LGBB gleefully gallops animatedly around her clothes-strewn floor.
Steve: "Can you.... run like a dog?"
She runs on the spot, ad-libbing some panting like a dog.
Steve: "Can you.... spring like a cat?"
Some joyous springing, as light as a cat on its delicate paws, ensues.
Steve: "Can you.... swing like a monkey?"
The LGBB does her best Curious George monkey-arms, loping her room, face full of smiles.
Steve: "Can you.... soar like an eagle?"

Lolly plonks on the bed beside her Dad, thinks but a moment, and then makes a sawing motion using her left hand to saw through her right arm.

And he didn't even laugh, so as not to stifle her creativity.  What a bloke.  I'd have been in FITS OF GIGGLES ON THE FLOOR.

Back when I was funny

Oh holy moly, this takes me back. I'm trying desperately to concentrate on writing. Truly, I am. In my (so far unfulfilling) search for what I am looking for, I found this old post (and I've reposted it below). Oh, how I remember the days....

If there is one word you must NEVER say around the LGBB, it is ....

Skips.

Skips are biscuits. Apparently (just ask her). I want her to get the word wrong for as long as possible, it's that adorable.

It is the most uttered word on a daily basis. So much so that a "skip ban" has been placed on her until the afternoons - mind you, "skips" are actually vegetable chips (the poor poppet, I am so nasty, she's never even been introduced to a milk arrowroot yet). Still, she woofs her artsy-fartsy pansy skips like they're triple-decker chocomochafudge-a-licious gold.

There was a moment a couple of weeks back where she knew she'd pushed it too far. I laid down the letter of the Skip Law. Since then, instead of directly asking, imploring, pleading and then begging (my leg), she has decided to take the bigger-person approach; she'll sit back, look around then casually enquire with hands in the shrug position, "Skips? Where skips gone?" Pause for an answer and for effect and then you hear, "I don' know where skips' gone." See? She's not asking or nagging for it is beneath her (yeah, right). She's simply calling her skips. "Oh, skiiiips? Where you gorn?" She's good. Going to definitely have to get up earlier and earlier as she gets older, just to collect my wits about me.

And when you look at her quizzically, after you can no longer avoid that steel-blue - rather, The Blue Steel?, as mastered by her dad inadvertently and evidenced in any existing photo of him to date - glare, you can be assured that she will square you up and repeat again.

"Skips."

If you then try and tilt your head on the side with a puzzled expression, she'll press on. Perhaps you're not understanding her. She'll say it slowww-er. And more clearly so you can fulfil her request.

"Bisskips."

Oh! Bisskips. How silly of me. I thought you said skips.

Lol-cabulary

Lol-cabulary: My made-up word to describe the vocabulary of Lolly. So I don't forget it.


• Memo - not, as you may think, of the notation variety. Nor a man of Greek Ostrayan descent, the likes of whom was made (in)famous on Acropolis Now. No, this is Memo (spoken: "ME-moe") as in "I want to watch Finding Memo."

• Yesterweek - last week. Of course.

• Lastday - oh dear. Those pesky English language inventors really should have consulted with our daughter. I mean, yeah. I'm with her (she argues this with us regularly): Why, if it is "yesterday", is our word for the day before the current one not "lastday"? Or, alternatively, why can't we have yesterday and yesterweek? It's just silly.

• Smushmallows - the little fluffy balls of sugary delight that you roast by campfires or pop in your hot chocolate.

• "Yo Gazza Gazza" - apparently an Aussie version of Yo Gabba Gabba just begging to be made... I can just imagine what DJ Lance Rock would be wearing in that version.

• Cathay - the place you go for a 'cino and a light snack.
Used in a sentence: "Come on, Mummy, let's go to the cathay for a milkshake."

• Matcher - use these to light candles and fires. I guess it makes sense, when all you hear is "Where are the matches?", "I need the matches" and so on. How does she know it's not matchers? Again, I'm almost with her.