Children's powers of sleep amaze me.
New parents creep around their houses and rely on a mysterious code of whispers and sign language to communicate, lest, heaven forbid, they Disturb The Baby. Given their probable sleep deficit, it's totally understandable. But necessary, it ain't.
Almost from birth, the baby will wake often, but only when it's either hungry or wet. The chance of any external factors disturbing it are negligible. By the time the kid's 3, shut his or her bedroom door and you can safely go ahead and throw a party for two dozen guests.
They are simply uncanny.
We once had two workmen arrive just a few minutes after our daughters, then aged 3 and 1, went for their lunchtime naps. The tradies spent the next hour erecting a mantelpiece, involving the liberal use of hammer blows, just metres from the girls' bedrooms.
There was not a peep out of them, other than some light snoring.
When they wandered downstairs later that afternoon, they thought the Mantelpiece Fairy had swung by.
Like many parents checking on their children before retiring for the night, I've blundered around in darkened rooms and at times inflicted painful toe injuries on myself in a misguided attempt to preserve the child's sleep. Can I just say this: don't bother.
Switch on their lights. Clear the toys off the bed. Tidy up. Re-shelve the books. Hell, whistle if you feel like it. Rearrange the blankets to keep the child warm, and, go on, give them one more kiss. Trust me, it won't make any difference to them, and it will make you feel better.
What a blessing to be able to sleep as solidly as kids can. I figure it's a 30/70 mix of physical tiredness and a clear conscience. While we lie awake worrying about work, the mortgage, global warming and our waist measurements, our kids' innocence and purity of heart has earned them blissful, restful slumber.
Innocence and purity of heart, of course, doesn't explain the secret of teenagers' even more impressive capacity for sleep. I'll bring you the results of that research in a few years' time.
Monday, December 8, 2008
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Auction Action
Well! It's been quite a weekend.
We've decided, after nearly five years, that the road outside our family home is becoming just a leeee - tle bit too busy for comfort.
Hence the search for a new place - what we're after is basically the same house as we have now, but in a better location. But not too far away. In fact, we've given explicit instructions to local realtors to find us a spot somewhere within the area bounded by four local streets. So they have easily, oh, two or three square miles to work with. One doesn't move out of our suburb, apparently - you only have to meet all the second- and third-generation locals to realise that - one simply re-locates within it.
So there we were, determinedly bidding on a house in the very next street to ours. And when I say a house, I mean a threadbare, grubby, tumbledown shack on an unkempt block, which would not change hands for any less than two million dollars.
In the event, there were three parties actively bidding, amongst a crowd comprised of a few hopeful but quickly forlorn bargain-hunters, some neighbours having a stickybeak, and an assortment of domestic pets who charmed sections of the crowd during lulls in the proceedings.
Of those with the chequebook readily at hand, apart from us - the young homebuyers - there was, forgive me, a bogan property developer favouring the t-shirt, 3/4 pants, and runners look; and a shaven-headed buyer's advocate dressed in white shirt, garish red tie, black wraparound sunglasses, and the Melbourne real estate industry uniform of dark single-breasted suit - in this case, at least two sizes too small for his girth. He looked more shark than sharp.
The buyer's advocate dropped off the pace early and vanished, probably off to terrorise a school of small fish somewhere off Dendy Beach. The bogan developer made desultory bids when prompted, all the while keeping up a running tirade against the vendor bids being entered by the auctioneer, and good on him, too.
We just tried to pretend we had far deeper pockets than we did. Being a family in search of a family home, at least we knew we had the locals on our side, not that they offered to chip in to bolster our position.
The agents disappeared inside to consult with the vendors for an extended period, and on their return, excused their lengthy absence by explaining that, "...the property has been in the family for more than 40 years, so, as you can imagine, it's quite an emotional time."
One suspected that the dominant emotion amongst those inside the house was blind panic, as the bidding failed to ascend to anywhere near the desired heights.
Re-starting the process, the auctioneer noted that the leading bid, ours, was at $916,000 - a mere million short of the truth. As the vendors reeled into a dead faint inside, one of his colleagues unsportingly corrected his mistake.
Then - in one of those totally incongruous, surreal moments - bidding was interrupted when one of the local pets who earlier had been amusing the crowd ran in front of a passing car, with fatal results. Children wailed, old ladies wept, some gawked, stunned; others turned their heads.
It took quite some aplomb for the auctioneer to drag attention back to centre stage, especially as one of the only two remaining groups of bidders - us - nearly left at that point, greatly nonplussed at the prospect of looking back for generations to come on a road death as the enduring memory of the day we bought the family home.
In the end, put simply, we ran out of money. Realising this, we then bid only a further sixty thousand dollars beyond that point, without really knowing where it would come from. So it may be as well that we missed out.
Not for the neighbours though. While we can walk away, and live to bid another day, those already livng in the street now face a period of uncertainty while the bogan developer settles on which execrable townhouse design he'll inflict on the neighbourhood.
We've decided, after nearly five years, that the road outside our family home is becoming just a leeee - tle bit too busy for comfort.
Hence the search for a new place - what we're after is basically the same house as we have now, but in a better location. But not too far away. In fact, we've given explicit instructions to local realtors to find us a spot somewhere within the area bounded by four local streets. So they have easily, oh, two or three square miles to work with. One doesn't move out of our suburb, apparently - you only have to meet all the second- and third-generation locals to realise that - one simply re-locates within it.
So there we were, determinedly bidding on a house in the very next street to ours. And when I say a house, I mean a threadbare, grubby, tumbledown shack on an unkempt block, which would not change hands for any less than two million dollars.
In the event, there were three parties actively bidding, amongst a crowd comprised of a few hopeful but quickly forlorn bargain-hunters, some neighbours having a stickybeak, and an assortment of domestic pets who charmed sections of the crowd during lulls in the proceedings.
Of those with the chequebook readily at hand, apart from us - the young homebuyers - there was, forgive me, a bogan property developer favouring the t-shirt, 3/4 pants, and runners look; and a shaven-headed buyer's advocate dressed in white shirt, garish red tie, black wraparound sunglasses, and the Melbourne real estate industry uniform of dark single-breasted suit - in this case, at least two sizes too small for his girth. He looked more shark than sharp.
The buyer's advocate dropped off the pace early and vanished, probably off to terrorise a school of small fish somewhere off Dendy Beach. The bogan developer made desultory bids when prompted, all the while keeping up a running tirade against the vendor bids being entered by the auctioneer, and good on him, too.
We just tried to pretend we had far deeper pockets than we did. Being a family in search of a family home, at least we knew we had the locals on our side, not that they offered to chip in to bolster our position.
The agents disappeared inside to consult with the vendors for an extended period, and on their return, excused their lengthy absence by explaining that, "...the property has been in the family for more than 40 years, so, as you can imagine, it's quite an emotional time."
One suspected that the dominant emotion amongst those inside the house was blind panic, as the bidding failed to ascend to anywhere near the desired heights.
Re-starting the process, the auctioneer noted that the leading bid, ours, was at $916,000 - a mere million short of the truth. As the vendors reeled into a dead faint inside, one of his colleagues unsportingly corrected his mistake.
Then - in one of those totally incongruous, surreal moments - bidding was interrupted when one of the local pets who earlier had been amusing the crowd ran in front of a passing car, with fatal results. Children wailed, old ladies wept, some gawked, stunned; others turned their heads.
It took quite some aplomb for the auctioneer to drag attention back to centre stage, especially as one of the only two remaining groups of bidders - us - nearly left at that point, greatly nonplussed at the prospect of looking back for generations to come on a road death as the enduring memory of the day we bought the family home.
In the end, put simply, we ran out of money. Realising this, we then bid only a further sixty thousand dollars beyond that point, without really knowing where it would come from. So it may be as well that we missed out.
Not for the neighbours though. While we can walk away, and live to bid another day, those already livng in the street now face a period of uncertainty while the bogan developer settles on which execrable townhouse design he'll inflict on the neighbourhood.
Friday, April 4, 2008
An Ongoing Riddle
Like I said, fathering doesn't get any easier. I feel qualified to say that, having raised three children in the past seven years, only to find I'm now no better at it than I was when it all began in late 2000.
Don't get me wrong. You wouldn't change anything for the world (most days), but, being one for whom the phrase 'creature of habit' may well have been specifically coined, often I find myself wishing I could just get into some sort of GODDAMN FRIGGIN' ROUTINE, for Chrissakes!
And that's another thing. You find yourself getting so darn frustrated sometimes that you blow your top at things that really aren't worth the fuss. And then - worse - you feel like a first class heel for making little children cry. Well done, you big bully.
But I'm trying to get better at fathering, especially since we're onto our third, and this will be my last chance. You fast-forward in your mind to a time when not only will the kids not be elbowing each other aside to compete for your attention and indulgence, they won't even want to be spotted in the same suburb as you. Make the most of the rock star adulation while it lasts, I tell myself. It won't be around forever.
Don't get me wrong. You wouldn't change anything for the world (most days), but, being one for whom the phrase 'creature of habit' may well have been specifically coined, often I find myself wishing I could just get into some sort of GODDAMN FRIGGIN' ROUTINE, for Chrissakes!
And that's another thing. You find yourself getting so darn frustrated sometimes that you blow your top at things that really aren't worth the fuss. And then - worse - you feel like a first class heel for making little children cry. Well done, you big bully.
But I'm trying to get better at fathering, especially since we're onto our third, and this will be my last chance. You fast-forward in your mind to a time when not only will the kids not be elbowing each other aside to compete for your attention and indulgence, they won't even want to be spotted in the same suburb as you. Make the most of the rock star adulation while it lasts, I tell myself. It won't be around forever.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
So Begins the Charm Offensive
I've been a father for more than seven years now. How come it doesn't get any easier?
That's not me over there on the right, by the way. That's the son & heir, rampaging through our holiday apartment with the confidence of one who has been upright since, oh, February. He's nearly 14 months old now, and, despite a selection of fully- and partly-formed teeth, cute as all get-out.
Trouble is, he knows it.
(This is possibly because his mother has forsaken the use of his given names, in favour of "My Handsome", 24/7)
Consequently, the boy now does his best to charm every female, regardless of age, whom he meets. Other mothers, their pre-school daughters, waitresses, receptionists, delivery couriers, passers-by in the street - basically anyone with two X chromosomes in their cells is on his list.
It's simply astonishing to observe. Whatever task he is undertaking the moment a female appears - eating, watching TV, riding in a pram - he will abandon in a second, preferring instead to lock his laser-like gaze quite shamelessly onto the object of his affection. It's the sort of leering brazenness for which, in a bar, women either call security, or toss their drink over you. I would imagine.
But you can get away with a lot, evidently, when you are only 30 inches or so tall.
His mother has developed a certain despondency about it all. She feels she is losing him before her time. For me, his father, naturellement, his constant charm offensive engenders a certain undeniable pride. That's My Boy.
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