So.
I have an iPhone now, which is making everything better and
worse simultaneously.* It’s worse because I often spend time reading articles
and checking Facebook when pre-iPhone I would have written blog posts in my
head or pondered the meaning of life instead (I miss the writing and the pondering,
but slightly less than I want to find out what’s happened in internet-land
since I last found out). Also, staring at the small screen all of election day may
have caused permanent damage to my eyeballs. And it’s better because I don’t
feel quite so lost sometimes anymore (hurrah for access to maps and emails
while I’m out!), and I like not having to print out tickets for events, and the
always-there camera is amazing, and the storage blows my mind, and I now have Pokémon Go.
Those of you who know what Pokémon Go is can skip ahead to the next paragraph. For those of
you who have no idea what I’m talking about (hello Nanna and Grandpa! I love
you!), Pokémon Go is a game that I
just spent a good 10 minutes trying to describe myself before realising someone
had probably done it far better somewhere else on the internet (and I was
right: read this). I downloaded it one afternoon before we picked up Hazel from
preschool, and after the excitement of discovering PokéStops and catching our
first Pokémon, Moses looked at me with such adoration and gratitude that any
doubts I had about the decision were quickly dispelled. I don’t think he’s ever
loved me as much as he did that afternoon. We’ve since been walking a lot
together, as the further you walk the more eggs you hatch and the more candy
you collect for your buddy (we also now have intense conversations about eggs,
candy and buddies). We walked the 4 kilometres to Hurstville the other day, and Moses
complained about his legs being tired precisely zero times (possibly because I
piggy-backed him up the final hill). Sometimes he whinges about having to walk
from the house to the car parked out the front, so this felt like an epic
achievement.
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| Me piggy-backing Mo up said hill |
While I can’t completely explain my increasing love for this
game (apart from the incentive to exercise and the opportunity to invent new
camel-case words starting with ‘Poké’), Mo’s makes more sense: he’s just moved into the Montessori
equivalent of year one (year levels are based on age and readiness rather than
the calendar year), and at least half his class (it seems) is PokéHooked. They
trade cards at lunch time and draw PokéPictures and swap PokéTips about how to
evolve particular Pokémon, all of which Moses enthusiastically shares with me
on the drive home. Apart from the Pokémon-ing, he’s thoroughly enjoying being
in a new class and having a new teacher, and it’s such a relief watching him
run into the hall so happily every morning after a few terms of sad drop-offs.
It’s been an exhausting year for Mo (and therefore the rest of us); he’s ready
for a long holiday.
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| Mo's proud smile, after picking up a random book and reading it by himself |
I was thinking the other day about boys’ voices breaking,
and how it’s such an obvious transition between one stage and the next. I think
Mo’s going through one of these transitions at the moment, except it’s his
behaviour that breaks instead of his voice: one minute he’s Big Moses, able to
think rationally and take himself off for time out when he needs to, and then,
suddenly, he’ll snap into Little Moses, yelling “Aaaaaaarrrrrgggh!!” at the top
of his voice because his brain is too overwhelmed to find words to express his
feelings better in that moment. I love watching
him grow and think about the world, as he tells us about his research at school
or we discuss the questions in the Short
and Curly podcast. He’s currently fascinated by “the ‘f’ word” (as he calls
it), and has asked numerous times now whether we say it in our family and
why/why not. The other night at bedtime, after a discussion along these lines, I
told him he could say the actual word and he whispered it and we giggled
together. I thought afterwards that the “Aaaaaaarrrrrgggh!!” moments are the
price I pay for the privilege of witnessing the beautiful ones, like my child
saying fuck for the first time.
(Earlier I was trying to make an analogy between parenting him
and catching Pokémon – you might choose a better ball for capturing more
difficult Pokémon, and give them a Razz Berry to pacify them first, for example
– but then I noticed that Pokémon had taken up way more of this update than
I’d originally intended and it was therefore probably time to dial it back a
notch or two…)
Hazel’s also in a transition-y phase, although hugs still cure pretty much everything. (She’s also become excited
about Pokémon Go, and hearing her
saying “There’s a PokéStop!” is possibly the cutest thing in the world, but
let’s move on.) She’s mostly
easy-going, although this is probably because she decides to do whatever she
likes when we’re not looking, so there’s usually no need to argue with us (although she does rather enjoy arguing with us, now that I think about it). She loves stories – telling them, flicking
through books and imagining them, and/or being read to. “Did you have fun at
the zoo this weekend, Moses?” asks her preschool teacher, Aisling, when we
arrive to pick up Hazel, to which we reply, “We didn’t go to the zoo this
weekend…?” and she says, “Oh!! Hazel told me you went with friends and she
loved the giraffes and the monkeys the best!” (Another time Hazel told Aisling
that Alan had broken his leg. He had not.) She’s obsessed with books in a way Moses wasn’t
at her age. In fact, she’s the opposite of Mo-at-three in so many ways: she’s
independent, she says no when you ask her to do something (we’re learning to
say, “Close the door, please!” rather than “Can you please close the door?”),
she boldly dives into new things, and she flat-out refuses to eat things she
has no interest in eating (“Just try a tiny bit, you may like it!” very rarely works on her).
Hazel’s girliness is expansive rather than stereotypical, so
doesn’t freak me out so much anymore. She loves the idea of doing ballet and is
currently fascinated by all things mermaid, but she also decided to go as a
firefighter to preschool dress-up day, chose green for her fingernails when
offered a choice of every polish colour known to humanity, and has, in recent
times, pretended to be a builder, a princess, and a doctor (not all at once).
She is completely comfortable in her skin (she takes off all of her clothes at every opportunity), which is a joy to behold.
As for the two of them together, Moses and Hazel are both
the best of friends and the worst of enemies depending on what time of day it
is, although they generally stick to the friendly end of the spectrum. They can
be giggling their heads off one moment, scratching at each other the next, then
giggling their heads off again a moment later. They’ve started playing and exploring
together in the backyard and at parks, leaving me sitting and watching or reading
and enjoying the space and the not-neededness. I like kids so much more than
babies. I’m realising that now.
It’s been a big year and I’ve forgotten how to
blog, but I’ll return and write about me some time before the end of the year.
Until then…
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* This is not my biggest news, it just tied in nicely to talking about Moses, and you all know how much I love a good segue.
