Two posts in one day? Huh?
Something today got me thinking about lazy parenting and / or laziness in general.
Last year we took our first family villa holiday. It was. of course, self catering. Now I don't think I was being lazy up until then for not choosing a self catering catering holiday with 5 of us to cater for - far from it. But the time had come when I had to face up to this personal nightmare in case it turned out that this type of holiday turned out to be everyone else's idea of holiday heaven - turned out it wasn't, woo hoo!!
We learned lots of things on that holiday.
One thing my kids learned after we got back is that 'Portuguese croissants are nicer than French croissants.'
I believe I do need to explain how they came to that conclusion.
The first time I went to the local supermarket I came across a very large bag of croissant shaped brioche rolls. They got chosen based purely on quantity. 5 people can get through lots of small croissant shaped rolls. They were served up warm for breakfast the next morning and adored by all. The inevitable question was asked - 'What are these Mummy?' I'm still not sure how or why the word croissant came out of my mouth. But the lazy lie had been told.
Those brioche rolls remained croissants for the rest of the holiday. For some reason I just never could be bothered to straighten everything out.
Fast forward a couple of months ....
We are in a cafe having a snack and I ordered a Croissant to go with my hot chocolate. The food arrives. By this point I had completely forgotten the brioche / croissant mash up in Portugal.
The ritual sharing of food took place, no one gets to eat their own food in our family! So the questions followed.
'What have you got Mummy?'
'It's a croissant'
'Its bigger than the croissants we had in Portugal'
'Yes, I know, but this is a proper French croissant.'
I'm thinking I've got away with it now :)
But then it all fell apart when the youngest offered the opinion that 'Portuguese croissants are much nicer than French Croissants!'
My one lazy word in Portugal so many months earlier now meant giving a long drawn out explanation in front of witnesses about the merits of French croissants and that although croissants could be made in Portugal they would be unlikely to be as good as ones made in France and anyway you ate Brioche rolls in Portugal which are in face another French pastry. Confused yet?
Sunday 22 April 2012
Faith?
I promised I would write about my faith when I started this Blog.
Just reviewed my three posts so far and no mention has been made of faith, not even the fleeting part Faith played in the baby naming saga!
Off I go on a tangent but I will get back to faith / Faith I promise.
The naming of my babies proved not to be the straight forward process I always thought it would be. I don't suppose it is for anyone really.
I really wanted to know the sex of the twins for many reasons - one being that I figured I would have to come up with names to suit if I had boy / boy, girl / girl or boy / girl twins. Then there was middle names too, insert head exploding icon.
I didn't think that simply choosing 2 boys names and 2 girls names would do the job - not sure why now but that easy course of action remained off the agenda! Anyway it was not until what proved to be 2 weeks before the twins were born that we got confirmation that we were having a boy and a girl. By this point the option of middle names had been thrown out. Here's a faith bit coming .... I figured they could chose their own when it came their time to be confirmed and therefore use their confirmation name as a middle name. That way they could take all the blame too!
Soooo the day dawns when I off I go into pre term labour and no decision has been made. My two favourite names had been vetoed by hubby. In return I had vetoed the majority of names he chose :) We had managed to narrow the decision down to 2 of each boy and girls names(one of which was Faith!), not bad I had thought with over 2 months left of my pregnancy. The birth story is a whole Blog post (or 10 more!).
But here comes the faith bit - As I was being prepared for the Section I knew that my epidural had worn off / failed and no one had told me that I was to be given a general anaesthetic. I lay there believing that I was about to have major abdominal surgery without the benefit of a working anaesthetic, OMG!!! At that point my babies were fighting for their lives too. I handed everything over to God and as I did the nurse beside took my hand and as I was turning my head towards her she said - 'Don't worry, I am going to stay with you until you go to sleep.' My sign from God.
Back to naming babies. I surrendered to the anaesthetic not having chosen names for the babies that were about to be born. It goes without saying that the next 24/48 hours were given over to matters much more important than names. At some point I did notice that there were tags on each incubator then some time later noticed that the girl baby was called Rebecca and the boy baby Matthew. How the hell had that happened? These 2 names had made the short list of 2 but how had they become my babies names? The mystery was solved when I next saw my hubby. He told me that after the babies had been taken to Special Care (NICU) a nurse had come to give him an update and had also asked what names we had chosen. 'So I told her' was what he said to me. See that is how easy it is. I am not sure that are many Mothers who do not get to chose the names of their children but I am in that select band! And yes I know the choice was not set in stone etc. but they had names which seemed to suit them so I left well alone :)
So comes the day to give birth to my plus one! And despite getting a full 9 months of pregnancy I am once again being prepared for a Section (in much calmer circumstances this time!) not knowing what we are going to call this baby I about to give birth to. A quick discussion squeezed in between the medical questions and we came up with Lewis as a name. Would love to say that we we had considered our choice carefully but we didn't and as these things happen he totally grew into his name.
There was no blinding spiritual moment during the birth of Lewis - in contrast the first words he heard his Mother mutter were 'Oh Shit' - again a whole other Blog post!
It was when we came to have him baptised that I got hit across the head with a faith lesson. For most of my adult life my attendance at Church had been sporadic at best and sometimes a lot worse. I had asked the Parish Priest if we could just bring Lewis along one afternoon and have him baptised without all the pomp and circumstance of the usual baptisms at our Church. I think Father Jim misunderstood my reasoning and because I could not point to my regular attendance at Church he was somewhat sceptical that all wanted was for Lewis to receive the sacrament without fuss. I had showed him no outward sign of my faith or my commitment to raise my children in the faith. So with a bit of a 'I'll show you' attitude I signed up for the Baptismal preparation classes and started attending Church every Sunday.
Eight years later as myself and my Church prepare my plus one for his First Holy Communion my Church attendance is sporadic at worst! I have gained so much in those years but as I hijacked this post to talk about baby names I'll leave that for another time .....
Just reviewed my three posts so far and no mention has been made of faith, not even the fleeting part Faith played in the baby naming saga!
Off I go on a tangent but I will get back to faith / Faith I promise.
The naming of my babies proved not to be the straight forward process I always thought it would be. I don't suppose it is for anyone really.
I really wanted to know the sex of the twins for many reasons - one being that I figured I would have to come up with names to suit if I had boy / boy, girl / girl or boy / girl twins. Then there was middle names too, insert head exploding icon.
I didn't think that simply choosing 2 boys names and 2 girls names would do the job - not sure why now but that easy course of action remained off the agenda! Anyway it was not until what proved to be 2 weeks before the twins were born that we got confirmation that we were having a boy and a girl. By this point the option of middle names had been thrown out. Here's a faith bit coming .... I figured they could chose their own when it came their time to be confirmed and therefore use their confirmation name as a middle name. That way they could take all the blame too!
Soooo the day dawns when I off I go into pre term labour and no decision has been made. My two favourite names had been vetoed by hubby. In return I had vetoed the majority of names he chose :) We had managed to narrow the decision down to 2 of each boy and girls names(one of which was Faith!), not bad I had thought with over 2 months left of my pregnancy. The birth story is a whole Blog post (or 10 more!).
But here comes the faith bit - As I was being prepared for the Section I knew that my epidural had worn off / failed and no one had told me that I was to be given a general anaesthetic. I lay there believing that I was about to have major abdominal surgery without the benefit of a working anaesthetic, OMG!!! At that point my babies were fighting for their lives too. I handed everything over to God and as I did the nurse beside took my hand and as I was turning my head towards her she said - 'Don't worry, I am going to stay with you until you go to sleep.' My sign from God.
Back to naming babies. I surrendered to the anaesthetic not having chosen names for the babies that were about to be born. It goes without saying that the next 24/48 hours were given over to matters much more important than names. At some point I did notice that there were tags on each incubator then some time later noticed that the girl baby was called Rebecca and the boy baby Matthew. How the hell had that happened? These 2 names had made the short list of 2 but how had they become my babies names? The mystery was solved when I next saw my hubby. He told me that after the babies had been taken to Special Care (NICU) a nurse had come to give him an update and had also asked what names we had chosen. 'So I told her' was what he said to me. See that is how easy it is. I am not sure that are many Mothers who do not get to chose the names of their children but I am in that select band! And yes I know the choice was not set in stone etc. but they had names which seemed to suit them so I left well alone :)
So comes the day to give birth to my plus one! And despite getting a full 9 months of pregnancy I am once again being prepared for a Section (in much calmer circumstances this time!) not knowing what we are going to call this baby I about to give birth to. A quick discussion squeezed in between the medical questions and we came up with Lewis as a name. Would love to say that we we had considered our choice carefully but we didn't and as these things happen he totally grew into his name.
There was no blinding spiritual moment during the birth of Lewis - in contrast the first words he heard his Mother mutter were 'Oh Shit' - again a whole other Blog post!
It was when we came to have him baptised that I got hit across the head with a faith lesson. For most of my adult life my attendance at Church had been sporadic at best and sometimes a lot worse. I had asked the Parish Priest if we could just bring Lewis along one afternoon and have him baptised without all the pomp and circumstance of the usual baptisms at our Church. I think Father Jim misunderstood my reasoning and because I could not point to my regular attendance at Church he was somewhat sceptical that all wanted was for Lewis to receive the sacrament without fuss. I had showed him no outward sign of my faith or my commitment to raise my children in the faith. So with a bit of a 'I'll show you' attitude I signed up for the Baptismal preparation classes and started attending Church every Sunday.
Eight years later as myself and my Church prepare my plus one for his First Holy Communion my Church attendance is sporadic at worst! I have gained so much in those years but as I hijacked this post to talk about baby names I'll leave that for another time .....
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