Birds Bees and Tooth Fairies

Why do they call it The Birds and The Bees? I’ve always  wondered ; must Google it sometime. 

Anyway my little precious; She-Who-No-Longer-Worships-Pink also no longer worships boys.   

Not that she actually worshiped them exactly, but she did have a couple of crushes on a couple of boys in Kindy and Year1.

But not now. “Not ever” she says.

Beyond our own changed family situation I think it’s a whole bunch of influences: First there was Jon Smith dumping Pocahontas (after she saved his arse) as soon as their relationship got geographically challenging. Then when she became convenient again; suddenly it’s all about him and his ambitions..

Then there’s Thor telling Jane Foster, 'I’ll just be back in a jiffy', before immediately destroying the Bi-frost and going AWOL for two years.

Finally there’s the whole Frozen scandal, where Ana’s fiancée, who turns out only proposed as a social climbing exercise, tries to murder both her and her sister. 

So now when any boy shows my girl attention, she says she will "fart in his general direction!" She is a huge fan of Monty Python humour; but she’s deadly serious about weaponising her farts as a male deterrent.

She announced the other day that she never wants to have children too. 

I asked her why and she said "nappies, and wiping poohey bottoms - Eeeeeyeeewww".  Clearly I’ve voiced way too much on this topic in my attempts to encourage her to wipe her own after number twos. 

Then she flawed me with this:

“And I don’t want to squeeze a baby out of my bottom either!’

Who told her that?!! 

It wasn’t me. 

I didn’t, in fact, squeeze her out of my anything because of a medical emergency so I’m certainly no expert in that area. Ask me about Epidurals then I’m your gal.

I did tell her baby’s grow in mummy’s tummies and that’s a wonderful thing; talking to them, feeling them grow, dance about and throw punches. Pinkster loves my stories about when she lived in my tummy and how much dancing she did in there.

But when she asked how she got out of my tummy, I told her; ‘when it’s time for a baby to be born, you go to hospital and the baby Doctor gets your baby out'. We are on a need-to-know basis here.

But apparently it was someone at school who brought up the Squeezing out of Bottom thing. 

This is something I’ve come to realise, especially after the whole tooth fairy, Santa thing – that each parent tells their kids a bit more, a bit less and sometimes something completely different. 

She-Who-No-Longer-Worships-Pink was in tears the first time her best friend told her that her father said the tooth fairy wasn’t real. She'd only just lost her first tooth and was still in raptures over the teeny-tiny letter she found with a coin under her pillow. Then her best friend’s dad comes over all; ‘let’s stick to facts-kiddo’, and I’m left dealing with the fall-out.

Sometimes I guess 'other parents' give their older children age appropriate information that is duly passed on to younger siblings with quite a bit less discernment for the age appropriateness of the content.  What can you do?

I’m comfortable with what I tell Pinkster, I’m not saying I’m right or wrong, just comfortable that I’ve sought and been given good advice from books and psychologists.

I was a year older than she was before I was told that babies grow from a seed inside their mummies tummies. That  satisfied my curiosity and held off more tricky questions until I was in my teens. Kids are more with-it these days with more access to information; exposed through various media to more adult themes. 

Like Monty Python? Or Thor? Oops.  But I still say Disney movies and characters peddle more adult themes than Marvel or John Cleese any day. 

Incidentally I don’t let her watch Holy Grail in its entirety, she’s just mad about The Knights Who Say Ni demanding a shrubbery. Another favourite  is the castle of Frenchies who mercilessly pelt king Arthur and his knights with Livestock. 

But speaking of Adult Themes; Dr Phil has some very good advice on age appropriate discussions about the Birds And the Bees. 

As for relationships, I don’t think I’ll encourage or even pursue She-Who-No-Longer-Worships-Pink ’s aversion to boyfriends at this age. 

I’m ok that she’s not boy-crazy and I’m certain ‘that’ will come and so far she seems to be sussing out the situation just fine on her own.

You may be wondering what I told her about the tooth fairy, without calling her bestie’s Dad a liar-liar pants on fire?   I dont want to leave you hanging, but that's one for next week.

Joining the linky...

Let It Go

I was a crafty mummy last Friday. And Saturday too, but the building site got the best of me. 

There does come a point however, where you have to Let it Go.    

For a bit.

"Put down that screwdriver and step away from the Renovation, ma'am".

For two months in between school runs I've found myself  sanding and retouching paintwork.  Breaking screw heads off into the back of wardrobe handles, shopping for taps and tiles and so much more.

Last Friday we encountered a bunch of warped tiles in our lot which added a rat-run across town to the tile shop (just before school run) to my schedule. I also had to 'be there' for the shower-screen measuring guy, to tell him please just make the damned thing fit (and when he did it looked too big). Then my Saturday was held to ransom by the rubbish removal guys. Who left that pile of broken tiles and debris in the middle of the lounge????

But somehow I reached deep down into my self - got in touch with my inner-Nanna and I managed to cough-up a little creative couture for our lovely friend Blythe.

This was a promise to She-Who-Worships-Pink-and-Now-Also-Blue. An overdue promise at that.
But our little poppet has been so understanding of my newest preoccupation.  She's even been helping out - on the weekend helping cleaning, sitting quietly drawing while I screwed and filled, sanded and attached things in other rooms.  She's given advice (good advice) on colour schemes and fixtures.

Today she chose the handles for the new bathroom vanity  - OK I vetoed her first choice of  brass teddy bears.  But since we've discovered she has she has quite a good eye for aesthetic balance (except when it comes to bear handles) we gave her final say on whether they should be attached vertically rather than horizontally and she chose well.

She sat on the new toilet bowl - not yet attached - to see if there was enough leg-room between the loo and the larger shower screen. Then we made the tallest of the cabinet makers sit on it too just to be sure.
Just quietly, I really enjoy making my builders do embarrassing things.

Anyway my girl deserves a little treat and this teeny-tiny costume was it.  She's a beautiful and unique doll our Blythe and she makes a wonderful Elsa. Now Pinkster has a friend with a matching costume to hers.

I've been asked by another mum, where you get this lovely creature and you still can although mine is vintage (from 1971 the year they were both launched and spectacularly flopped).

You can buy Blythe dolls on line, they're reproducing them in Japan but they cost a bit more than Elsa herself (yes even at the scalpers' inflated E bay prices)

A Blythe can cost anywhere from $300 up to $800.

But her eyes change colour! She has a world of wigs and accessories to make even Barbie turn pea-green with envy and let's face it, she's hauntingly lovely with those enormous peepers of hers.

Frozen

She-Who-Worships-Pink now worships blue too, thanks to the movie 'Frozen'.

I had to order the DVD on Amazon because Miss Pink couldn't wait a month for it to be released in Australia. We've watched it on loop for longer than I care to think about and even I have "Let It Go" playing over and over in my head 24/7.

It was even the feature song of our school's recent Grand-friends Day concert. Then it was the performance piece at a recent birthday party. 

I have been tasked now with finding an 'Elsa doll' which is proving to be more difficult than locating a four-leaf-clover.

And the dress...

Well, that one's more up my alley. Ebay has loads of hideous Elsa dresses that bear no resemblance at all to the original:

Which just offends my designer origins...

So off we went to our favorite fabric store (Remnant Warehouse -Alexandria) where Pinkster went mad as usual. Fabric retailers in Sydney are few and far between, good ones.. Well it's almost easier to find an Elsa doll quite frankly. But this one is special; a huge range of dance/ costume fabrics and the staff really know their stuff. 

Still I couldn't get exactly the pale blues I wanted and Pinkster's like a bunny in the headlights when confronted with sequins.

This is what we came up with - not perfect, but not bad.

So two hours later, one pattern and seven fabric pieces cut, I got to sewing...until the sewing machine broke down. To name and shame: it's a relatively new Toyota. DON'T touch them with a barge pole.

So I would like to show you the final result, but even after dragging my 20-something-year-old Janome out of the attic to finish off, my house model had to go to bed before completion of the finishing touches.

Now it's also the seamstress's bed time so I'll have to finish hemming and the photo-shoot in the morning....

I really need to film Pinkster performing in this costume- way too cute, especially as her wig slips :0)