Bad Behavior

For anyone wondering if it is possible for children to be assholes, be assured, it really, really is.

The Prawn is not generally an asshole. In the traditional sense, I suppose it's not really fair to apply the asshole label until one knows how NOT to be an asshole, but let me just go on to tell you how tired I am of teething.

What kind of crappy design flaw is it to have teeth come in one at a time, causing apparently excruciating discomfort with every new gnasher? Surely, someone, somewhere should be working on a way to get all of the buggers to come in at the same time so that we could all GET A LITTLE SLEEP AROUND HERE.

Chatterbox

The horror. It can talk.

I don't remember who said it, but a quote that sticks in my mind about children is that "it's lovely to live near a playground so that you can hear the chatter of little voices. Providing that you don't listen to closely to what they're actually saying." This fact was brought into sharp relief when I took The Prawn to our local toddler playground for an afternoon romp only to find it mostly occupied with 9-10 year old boys goofing around. I fixed them with a fairly disapproving look, but ignored them for the most part while the Prawn clambered happily over some of the equipment. However, I kept one ear on their conversation which was both shocking and hilarious at the same time. My guess is that they had been talking fairly freely before my arrival and either out of deference for my adult authority status (ha!) or the Prawn's pristine ears, while their talk remained coarse, they at least had the decency to SPELL their curse words.

"You know that blonde kid, yeah? Who called me a b-a-s-t-a-r-d?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm going to punch 'im in the f-u-c-k-i-n-g face tomorrow at break."


It took all my power not to laugh, seeing as how they'd go to all that trouble. Little s-h-i-t-s.

At any rate, the Prawn is also making more and more advanced forays into the world of linguistics and thankfully none of them have included any of the above mentioned words. It has become obvious to us that while we may still be able to swear like sailors once she is abed, that we'd better find more creative methods of expressing displeasure when she is in earshot.

Occasionally we leave her with a friend who is very good with children and we trust totally but who is, shall we say, slightly more basic in vocabulary than we ourselves are. She's someone who might say "anyfink" instead of "anything" or "I done that" rather than "I did that". One of my personal favorite derogatory phrases that I've learned since coming to the UK has been "minging", as it seems to be rather descriptive of something that is disgusting or unpleasant. This girl uses this phrase quite a lot and last night I off-handedly said it to Mr. DD about something only to hear a little voice down at knee height say, "MINGING!" gleefully. While not ACTUALLY a curse word, it's not necessarily something I want my child shouting in the supermarket, to be taken the wrong way by all and sundry. Mr. DD already taught her to say "bum" which is quite enough to be getting on with.

Her vocabulary list now includes almost all parts of the face, a fair number of barnyard animals, the number 2, the standard "mama" and "dada", clock, cheese, banana, (pronounced "nana") milk, juice, egg, a number of items of clothing, a few transportational devices and of course her first love, "guitar".

The fact that I manufactured something that is now capable of talking to me is a daily source of amazement.

Inked *updated*

When I get an idea in my head, I don’t dick around. All I can say right now is that my ankle hurts.

At this point, I must admit my profoundly embarrassing love for “reality” series, Miami Ink, chronicling the life and slightly staged times of the Floridian inkers at Love/Hate Tattoos in South Beach and the effect that these nightly forays into the world of body modification was having on my willpower to not have any more work done. Mr. DD was already getting some ink to commemorate the birth of the Prawn, so I couldn’t very well let him have all the flesh scarifying fun. After a few days of playing around in Photoshop, I came up with a design that I was happy with and yesterday, the two of us trotted off to the local inkery to get marked for life. (The Prawn was safely and temporarily ensconced with a babysitter so that she didn’t spend the duration of our appointments tearing flash off the walls and decorating the floor with as many different colors of ink as she could get her mitts on.)

Tattoos always seem to be a great idea until the moment the needle touches your skin for the first time causing a sensation akin to someone viciously and repeatedly stubbing a very fine cigarette out on you. And then doing it again, and enjoying it. This is not to elicit pity, because asking for compassion following an entirely unnecessary and self-inflicted hurt would be just a tad foolish, but it doesn’t change the fact that it hurts like the proverbial motherfucker. It’s lucky for me that my inker is not only tremendously talented, but a fast worker, so the agony was a relatively short one and I came out the other end with a rather lovely bit of art on my right ankle with should heal up in relatively short order.

Mr. DD went second and offered up his arm to the needle to be adorned with the initials of our daughter. The area of the hands, for my husband, is a bit of a delicate region. In fact, such is his squeamishness about his digits and their outlands that, if given a choice between hand surgery and losing one or both testicles, I think his boys might have a run for their money. I was expecting at least a bit of pallor, but he took it like a man under the quick hand of our artist and was soon in possession with a very cool set of initials in a great font, ironically called Skin Deep.

So, here we both sit, blogging our experiences and nursing the niggling pain in our extremities and enjoying our new bits of ink.

Until the next time.

More Prawn Than You Can Handle

This is the one time of year that I get to post "don't you wish your countryside was hot like mine" pics. Our local bluebell woods was remarkably quiet this afternoon. It's a shame that this isolated and quiet spot turns into Disney World when the flowers come out, complete with shouting children, quarreling adults and rambunctious dogs.

This is the Prawn's second visit to the woods and the site of her first smile a little over a year ago. This time, she got to navigate the paths under her own power.

Photo Shoot

It occurs to me that it has been far too long since the last Prawn Cuteness fix, so, for your viewing enjoyment, here she is.



This is a relatively new trick; the headstand.



The tiny trampoline was a birthday gift and a great toy success.



A moment from The Prawn's visit to the farm; getting to hang with the calves.



Just woken up on the right side of the bed.



Prawn and mummy.

Alchemy

Things have been a little manic in Rockmamaville of late. What with the Prawn now being a fairly sentient human being who demands books (not that I’m complaining; it’s awesome. She could want to watch Lazy Town all morning, which would obviously kill me) be read to her RIGHT NOW on pain of “Peepo Baby” flung with amazing viciousness at your crotch and almighty tantrum, it’s a little harder to get a chance to sit down with a cup of tea and a natter with the beloved internets.

The other activity taking up much of my time has been a renewed and fervent interest in my hobby, which is jewelry making.

I wish I could tell a story about how metal working always called to me or how exerting my will over base metals makes me feel like I’m in touch with the beating heart of the planet. But both of those things would be total horseshit, because the reason I ACTUALLY got into it was because I wanted to spend a spring college semester screwing around and jewelry making sounded like a fun and relatively easy elective. It actually turned out to be terribly addictive and all the screwing around got put on hold while I JUST SOLDER THIS ONE LAST JUMP RING TOGETHER. During that semester, I made a couple of lovely pendants, a nickel ring and a “locket” for my friend Rosco that was heavy enough to be used for basic self-defence.

I didn’t pick up a jeweler’s torch again until a year or so after I moved to the UK when I discovered a nearby adult education course in jewelry making and thought it might be nice to reacquaint myself with the basics. Again, I managed to get totally sucked in and was soon busy crafting items to be sold by my saintly mother to her friends and colleagues under the heading of “My Aphrodite Jewelry”.

My mother has been my greatest saleswoman and cheerleader. So much so that early on, she let everyone at her church know that her daughter was selling jewelry on the internet at www.myaphrodite.com. While this was partially true, my website address is actually www.myaphroditejewelry.com, so we had a quick gander at the former site only to find that it was, in fact, a purveyor of sex toys. This early mishap spurred a frantic flurry of phone calls to ladies whom she’d alerted to the 20% off sale on “butt plugs and other anal stimulation devices”. (It is now some sort of erotic search engine.)

My work over the years has become more precise and professional in appearance. I get far fewer burns, rarely melt anything, get negligible fire scale and do a lot less swearing, however, I still do occasionally cut the top of my finger almost clean off with a jeweler’s saw on a semi-regular basis and spend a lot of time on the floor looking for beads or clasps that I’ve dropped before the Prawn can eat them. Although my mother still has a few “Stones and Scones” parties in the works, I’m trying to move the majority of my business onto Etsy, which has been a glorious find for me and hundreds of thousands of other small artisans. I’d encourage anyone to take the handmade pledge for a year and buy all of your gifts from the site. If you want felt mice dressed as pirates, you’re in luck. If you want a plush uterus, you’re sure to find one. If you’d like a wallet made of duct tape (WAY cooler than it sounds) with a photo of Bettie Page on the front, go for it. From the ridiculous to the sublime, everything that you could ever want under one roof, you WILL find it on Etsy.

Of course, I’m there too.

The Pen

Although we were dimly aware since the Prawn was born that at some point this was going to happen, it seems to have come roaring up awfully fast.

Mr. DD and I went to visit a nursery last week, which seems like far too much of a grown-up thing to be doing, but we went, regardless. Our current working arrangement doesn't allow Mr. DD to get nearly enough work done, nor is it fair on the Prawn, who spends the morning trying to think of new and creative ways to get her father's attention. The companies that Mr. DD and I work for are relocating to a business park about 20 minutes away and our current half day strategy will no longer be viable. So, I'll work three days a week, Mr. DD will work 4 and I'll spend 2 days at home with the Prawn all day. The other two days, she'll be spending at nursery.

Both of our experiences of nursery were based on...well, our experiences of nursery. Like, when we were both, ourselves, in nursery. These early memories included a big open room in a converted church hall with tables for snack, a lot of toys and a playground. It was their job simply to keep us occupied while our mothers went home to spend the afternoon lying down in a darkened room.

When we first arrived at the nursery, we were greeted by CCTV cameras and a buzzer on the door, which obviously bodes well for safety, although drives home the point that things have changed a little since my days in the playpen.

What we found inside was organization FAR beyond what we could possibly have imagined. There were rotas, outdoor play, messy play, music time and meals. There were Tweenies, Toddlers, Tiddlers, Babies and Older Babies, all sorted according to development and skills. Both of us were totally boggled at lists on the wall of over 60 children's preferences, dislikes, disciplines and allergies that were scrupulously taken into account.

The Prawn was enthralled. She's always been fascinated with other children and spent the majority of the time wriggling like an angry otter in order to escape and join the fun. During the last part of the visit, while we chatted to the owner in her office, one of the staff offered to take the Prawn. While we thought this would result in an almighty shouting fit, she was perfectly happy to be carried off by the stranger to join a circle of older children, all marveling over a toy pig that walked and waggled it's snout and curly tail. Far from being intimidated by the situation, she joined in enthusiastically while the older children smiled and cooed "hello, baby!" at her.

"Um, so where do we sign?" asked Mr. DD.

I won't have any hesitations whatsoever about leaving her at this place. The vibes were good, the safety and attention to detail were outstanding and it's obvious to me that it'll be good for her to interact with other children on a regular basis and have the full attention of her carers for the time that she's there. While the money is going to be tight, it'll be worth it in the amount of work that both I and Mr. DD are able to get accomplished and the heightening of the quality of time that we spend with her.