Food/Parenting/Relationships/The Every Day

{a fifo wife} have a great weekend a few great reads to start.

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The boys have been up with their Nana and Poppa in Darwin this week, the house has been so quiet and I have loved every minute. Like most mums, I have not been lounging around. I have instead have tidied and washed walls. I’m now kind of thinking I shouldn’t have instead I should have read, relaxed and written more but the mould we get here after summer is ludicrous and it needed to be done. Doing it with the boys and their constant asking would have meant it didn’t get done.

Anyway, this weekend husband and I are heading to our local for some dinner and then tomorrow, we are off to the city to see the movie the Aftermath with Kiera Knightly, I am so looking forward to it. It’s like a whole weekend on a date; so good.

An after note the movie was good but slow moving and the ending frustrated me ..so badly…but I liked it, all the same, has anyone else seen it?

Here a few great things to read this week given that I am posting this very late.

I’m cooking up a cake storm for school lunches, I am trying to be super organised for next term. It’s a one bowl, super easy and wonder cake. Here.

How to navigate an interaction with a special needs child. A mum with a special needs child tells you things she would like you to know. Here.

Have pets here is some design advice to keep it stylish. Here.

This article claims it will save you 20+ hours a week by helping you change your morning routine. Here.

Billy Connelly on getting old. I love Billy and his last interview broke my heart. Getting old can be a bit ordinary for some. Okay, it’s not a read but a watch. Here.

Wishing you a great week,

xx

Deb.

 

Parenting/Relationships/The Every Day

{parenting} five things to do with the kids that is not the park

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When the boys were very little I recall a time when we would spend hours at the park. Literal hours. We would also do park crawls, which is the same as a pub crawl in the sense that we went to all the parks in town, except it was for the kids, and no vodka was involved. The time we were at the park it was often just me and the boys, which was great but on hard days it wasn’t. Parenthood I swear can be the loneliest time.

Now we have some great parks in my local area and they are mostly underutilised; which is perhaps a sign of the times or perhaps because sometimes spending hours at the park as a parent solo can be like watching paint dry; especially after the fifth visit in as many days. So a quick think on five things you can do with the kids that’s not the park when your kids realise that a visit to Woolworths is not a real kids activity.

Board games.

Admittingly this is for the older kids rather than the little ones but we LOVE board games and card games. For us right now UNO is life. We play UNO during dinner or straight after. There is no wrong time for UNO in our house. We also love anything with trivia -ahem mum does- while dad is a Monopoly haggler. I like quick games. Some we have played this month are Five Second Rule and Beat the Parents. We also just brought junior Monopoly.

A bush walk.

Depending on the kid’s age will depend on your distance and difficulty. Personally, we have used the tracks around our local area as outings for years. The boys get caught up in the wildlife. The scurrying of insects, animals and on occasion people. Our favourite track around a lake sits back from the main road, where trucks and cars would roar past but if you listened closely when the boys where little you could swear you could hear dinosaurs roaring ;). Now that they are older and harder to trick its a race to see who can finish the five kilometres, around the lake, the quickest.

Photo scavenger hunts.

The boys love this one and I will often print something off Pinterest when they need to get out and especially when Nana visits. They can go and get some purposely taken images. There are some great lists out there for all ages.

Backyard games.

In summer this is also our thing. When the heat of the day has gone and it’s just on dusk we will come together in the back yard and play Fly, Mr Wolf and Red red rover. When the boys were little we would play sack and egg and spoon. Those evenings say summer holidays hands down to me.

Ball games.

We are really lucky in that we have a massive driveway in which we can play handball, cricket and basketball. I must admit however that at some point all of these turns into brandy and someone gets hurt. It’s at this point I scream I’m done and storm off inside.

Big love,
Deb

Parenting/Relationships/The Every Day

{mental health} I talk to myself and it doesn’t mean I’m crazy.

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He walked out of the bathroom the other day and said Mum if I talk to myself a lot should I be worried?

Hmm, I said I talk to myself a lot but it doesn’t mean I’m crazy. Let’s clarify what you mean. Are you speaking out loud to yourself as opposed to hearing voices or being anxious I asked?

No, I actually talk to myself out loud he said being specifically clearer.

Do you answer yourself I said out of curiosity.

He looked at me confused, but I wanted to ensure we were not talking about the voices of anxiety or alike because they are significantly different. They require deeper conversations.

You see, I said smiling. I run through conversations out loud that I need to have with people or when I have a situation I need to resolve things in or when I’m stuck and somethings not working. I do it a lot when I’m walking the dogs or in the car on my own. Sometimes I do it in the shower. Talking to myself helps me a lot. I realised I was smiling a massive smile that was perhaps not bringing him any reassurance that he wasn’t losing his mind.

So I straightened up and followed it up with no, it doesn’t mean your crazy or losing your mind. If those who are not self-talkers hear you they may think otherwise but meh, It is actually a good thing I said. I talk to myself and it doesn’t mean I’m crazy I confidently finsihed with.

It was at this point that I was going to rattle off about a 2008 study I had read that showed that when kids talked to themselves it helped improve their abilities to do activities. Then 2014 Ethan Kross Pshcologits wrote a paper on Self Talk, in it, he states that the right self-talk can instil confidence and ability to get through adverse situations. Its why sportspersons self-talk before or during a match, often with much success.

Or about the study on how talking out loud to one’s self can improve control because of its thought that hearing one’s self as an auditory command is better than a written one. Then there is the experience of Anne Wilson Schaef, a former psychologist who often encouraged her clients to speak to themselves. Not only did it improve her clients’ memories, but it also changed the way many of them felt. She believes it has something to do with who is listening to the words. “All of us need to talk to someone who’s interesting, intelligent, knows us well and is on our side and that’s us,” she says. “We’re probably the most interesting person we know. Knowing ourselves and how we feel can help us improve.”

I wanted to tell him all of that but, he looked at me queer like he was sorry he had asked and said okay, so it’s normal then. I’m not crazy.

Yes, I said completely normal and not one bit crazy. In fact its a sign of success I said. What’s not normal I continued with is you standing naked in the kitchen.

 

xxDeb.

Parenting/The Every Day

{parenting} the book that turned my teen boy into a reader.

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I love to read. My husband struggles to read but can appreciate the importance of reading and so tries to read- a little. So as a reader myself I would read to the boys a lot when they were younger and I read to them different genres. Everything and anything. When reading to them my husband and I would really get into it, using different character voices and sometimes acting out the pages; a real circus. Thinking of it now I miss those days and we stopped accidentally without realising it. So when we stopped reading to them they didn’t really pick it up for themselves; that is despite us offering so many different titles.

So whilst I fretted {as you do} B1 picked up a book at school one day; The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan. It was the book that turned my teen boy into a reader. Oh my goodness it made me happy. It’s the first in the Heros of Olympus Series, which is also part of the Percy Jackson tribe. There are five in the series and he has just finished the last one.  The book involves demigods, action and just a little bit of teenage love so I think it would be perfect for boys and girls.

An expert of the book tells it like this…

When Jason, Piper and Leo crash land at Camp Half-Blood, they have no idea what to expect. Apparently, this is the only safe place for children of the Greek gods – despite the monsters roaming the woods and demigods practising archery with flaming arrows and explosives.

But rumours of a terrible curse – and a missing hero – are flying around camp. It seems Jason, Piper and Leo are the chosen ones to embark on a terrifying new quest, which they must complete by the winter solstice. In just four days’ time.

Can the trio succeed on this deadly mission – and what must they sacrifice in order to survive?

B1 has also started reading other books, which is a great sign to me but it was such a great delight for me to say to him can you put your book away for dinner or see him getting off his bus with his head in his book. For someone that has had his struggles with learning, I firmly believe that this has been part of the reason (amongst other reasons) he has gone from being a D student to C, B and A’s.

Regardless of you can buy from all good book stores or from here, and here.

xx Deb

 

The Every Day

{mental health} how to destress without wine

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fifo husband

If you were to ask a parent how they destress most will say wine. However, taking a swig in the supermarket aisle with three kids in tow is often frowned upon. Then I came across an ingenious piece of research of how to de-stress without wine the other day. Which I was able to share with my husband at exactly the right time.

My husband called me last week whilst I was negotiating the modern days’ parent hunter-gathering tool- the shopping trolley. You know the one? It has a botched wheel that keeps veering off to the left; which in a busy shopping centre in peak hour shopping is ideal. Even more so when you have just fifteen minutes to get what you need. All whilst negotiating with children on why they can’t have a bag of sour bottle lollies {Yes you do go nuts after eating them. No, it’s not the sugar its the other things like the colouring}.

Just talk to me he said. Just talk.

I proceeded to babble about absolutely nothing. Finally, I say to him after not hearing a response are you okay.

If you know my husband he never gets stresses about much. It’s like his superpower. I also suspect that he wasn’t as much stressed, as he was worn down by whatever was happening at work. Still, the research was coming his way on; how to de-stress without wine which ironically doesnt apply to him because he doesnt drink- at all.

Yeah, he quietly replied. It was however obvious that my inherent babble hadn’t solved his problem whatever that might have been.

Did you know I said. That just thinking about a loved one can reduce stress levels? I imagined him at this point possibly rolling his eyes but smiling because I have this weird knack and complete love for useless information.

I took a breath before telling him that a new study from the University of Arizona asked 102 participants to complete a stressful task: submerging their foot into 3 inches of cold water ranging from 38 to 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Researchers measured participants’ blood pressure before and after the task.

The participants, all of whom were in committed romantic relationships that had lasted longer than a month, were randomly assigned to one of three conditions when completing the task. One group had their significant other sitting quietly in the same room with them during the task; another group was instructed to think about their romantic partner as a source of support during the task; and the final group was instructed to think about their day during the task as a control.

Surprisingly, the group that was only required to think about their partner had a much lower blood pressure response to the cold water than the control group. Not only that, the group that focused on the mental image of their partner showed the same rate of decreased blood pressure as the group participants who had their partners in the same room.

Although previous studies have suggested that having a partner present or visualizing a partner can help manage the body’s physiological response to stress, the new study, which was led by psychology doctoral student Kyle Bourassa and published in Psychophysiology, suggests that the two things are equally effective — at least when it comes to blood pressure reactivity. 

Does that help I asked him.

Yes, he said, it does and he hung up without much more than I love you.

He into the wide blue yonder and me into the depths of the supermarket with three kids, peak hour traffic, a to-do list a mile long, a dodgy trolley and his smiling face firmly planted in my mind.

xxDeb.