Jikana Damaru

The extra-curricular child

Mrs Woog wrote a great post today about the cost of raising children and the extra-cost of raising extra-curricular children. Hear hear, Woogsy!

The pressure on children and ourselves to be all singing, all dancing, all languages, all sporty, all musical, ‘all rounded’ uber-people is just incredible these days. I have always been very good at bypassing the kindergyming, jumping jacking, bee bop a wop bop todder classes. I just turned a blind eye to those sweet little ballerinas and the cute little boys with footy socks up to their armpits. But when the Tsunamis started school this year I found myself planning the following timetable:

Breathe in.

Mondays – (Maxi) Italian, 3.30pm at school.
Wednesdays – (The Badoo) Kinder dance, 10am / (Maxi) soceer training, 3.30pm at school
Thursdays – (Cappers) Jazz Ballet, 3.30pm at school
Fridays – (Cappers and Maxi) Brightsparks drama and dance, 3.30pm at school
Saturdays – (All) Swimming, 10 am at home / (Maxi and Cappers) Karate, 12 noon up the road / Soccer match, whenever, wherever

I kid you not, I'd even filled out the necessary 28 pages of enrolment forms I was that serious! I quickly came to my senses and talked to the children about what they really, really wanted to do. This eliminated soccer for Maxi before I even finished my sentence. Okay, so we won’t worry about pushing him into the ‘team sports’ thing for the third year in a row. Then I red penned the rest indiscriminately, arriving at the actual Term 1 2011 timetable.

Fridays – (Cappers and Maxi) Brightsparks drama and dance, 3.30pm at school.
Saturdays – (All) Swimming, 10 am at home / (Maxi and Cappers) Karate, 12 noon up the road

Breathe out!

How do you feel about all the extra-curricular activities available these days? Do you put a limit on your children’s activities? How's our taxi driving job working for you?

[Image via weheartit, please let me know if you know the original source.]

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Edit: I wrote this post this morning to publish later in the week; read Woogsy's post in the arvo; edited my post to include a link to her; and then hit 'Publish' instead of 'Draft'. Have you ever done that? So here we are with two posts in a day! And you will note from the date at the top that Blogger thinks it's 9/2 so what's that all about anyway! Ah well, enjoy! x

Sparkle

Nothing reminds me more of Valentines Day than something that sparkles - here are a few lovely images to get me (and hopefully you) inspired for Valentines Day next week!

wordless Wednesday

I would love you to join in with your wordless blog post

instead of using the 'linky tools' which you now need to pay for

please leave a link to your blog post in the comments

sorry I haven't been to visit all the entries from last week but I have been settling my grown up school girl into her new routine & also my internet connection is not co-operating!

happy wednesday to you all ♥

Camera Love Necklace

I was lucky enough to win a giveaway off of The Paper Mama's blog! What did I win? A "Camera Love Necklace" from Pamela Topping and $25 towards their actions! Talk about ecstatic! I'm already loving the actions I got- Rockstar package and the necklace is perfect!

Garden Trading

This week for my 'shops i love' page, I bring you another brand I saw at Top Drawer. Garden Trading is a brand whose focus is stylish, well designed, functional products that stand the test of time. They have a large range of products including accessories and lighting for kitchens, gardens, potting sheds and laundry rooms. Everything comes in lovely muted colours with a hint of vintage charm.

I am loving their ceramic lid jars in sage green and there taupe laundry room accessories.

To see more of my pics from Top Drawer check out my Flickr set, Top Drawer.

Have a sweet day!

Inspirational Pins - Love Hearts

Today in my series of posts, "Inspirational Pins", I bring you gorgeous Valentine's ideas from Martha Stewart, inspired by my Sweet Valentine inspirational board.

Have a sweet day!

The only child

It's awful to admit... but I've always had a bit of a prejudice against only children.

Argh, don't kill me! I've worked hard to rid myself of this evilness but I will admit to still being a little suspicious of onlies. Isn't that just so nuts? It's actually hard to admit because I know it's probably going to (unintentionally) offend some parents of an only child. But I can't shy away from it and just know that I have never knowingly been actively prejudice towards an individual about anything in my entire life.

So I'll press on.

When I was small enough to not think badly of myself for thinking this way, but big enough to actually give it some thought... let's say I was ten... I remember thinking that the only children in my class were really needy. They just didn't seem to know how to be an easy friend. I distinctly remember being pressured to be friends with a girl because she told me she didn't have any sisters like I did. I felt sorry for her, we hung out, I was rigid in her company.

Later I decided that only children were really hard to get on with because they didn't seem to know how to share like other kids did. A lesson that I was taught from dot had to be told again and again and again to the onlies. Yes, the stereotypes surrounding 'lonely onlies' seemed present at an early age.

Then, when I grew up a bit, I realised that a lot of my childhood feelings towards onlies boiled down to jealousy. I wished I didn't have to share either. I wished that I had all of my parents' attention like they had theirs. I wished it was just me, me, me. Me. Me.

I think we've all wished that at some stage.

Later, I dated an only child. The pressure. I know it wasn't intentional, but his parents were both just so into him and being his girlfriend was such hard work. I realised then that only children have pressures that I would most likely never understand and certainly would never know.

Now that I'm a grown up I still have my prejudices. They're hard to get rid of. I boast that I can pick an only child adult on sight (which is bollocks, but then prejudice is always bollocks). Deep down I still think only children are a little bit grabbier than the rest of us. I still think they learn a lot of lessons that the rest of us learn quickly and simply through our siblings much harder and sometimes later: sharing, humility, conditional love, managing anger... stuff. But I also note that only children are often better at stuff than the rest of us too. They seem more creative, worldly, independent, starry. Of course, many times they are also far more generous and humble than those of us with hordes of siblings too. I've definitely learned that!

These days I also know that the majority of people don't set out to have just one child. (Even the woman who told me years ago that they had decided to only have one child so they could 'focus' went on to have another some eight years after the first... which I think we can all admit was as very good thing indeed.) Some do, of course, and I am always interested to hear their reasoning (and I promise that I will listen without judgement!). But most don't. Most have a heartbreaking story or two that goes with having just one child and I'll bet that story is part of the reason why only children grow up to be so darn amazing.

These days, despite my suspicions, I realise that it takes all kinds of families to make up a wonderful society. And I'm quite certain that 'lonely onlies' aren't really so lonely after all.

What made you decide to have more than one child or just the one? Are you an only child yourself? Do you think it even matters?

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I rewound this post at Weekend Rewind on 6.8.2011

[Image via weheartit]