Vision therapy - not done yet

I'm feeling a little disillusioned about vision therapy lately. Since the Great Leap Forward that happened around September, I haven't really seen much more advance with Dash's reading.

We are approaching the end of his originally scheduled sessions, but when he had an assessment last week the doctor said that his eye teaming was still not great, and added a few more to work on that specifically. I told her that his reading still seemed slower than I would have expected, and she admitted that when he did the Readalyzer test, his eyes were still hopping around the line rather than following the letters sequentially as you would expect.

When we started this, early last summer, I felt that the worst outcome would be if they "passed" him at the end of his allotted sessions, said that everything looked fine on paper, and yet we couldn't see any noticeable difference in his reading. I don't think that's going to happen - some of his numbers have definitely improved, and his reading level has definitely gone up a few notches; maybe I'm just asking for too much. Maybe I should be happy with where we are.

But then. A friend of his was in the house last week - a boy who I know is reading way above his grade level, so I shouldn't compare them at all. But he read the warning on the side of Dash's Beyblade arena (if you don't know, don't worry about it) just the way you or I would, fluently and conversationally, while Dash was still trying to get it together to focus on the first couple of words. It hit me, a little bit.

Reading isn't rocket science. Everyone can read. It's not hard. It shouldn't be this hard. For Dash, I can tell that it's a big effort. He's not lacking desire, or curiosity, or interest, or practice, and he's smart to boot. And yet, I heard him struggling over the word "house" last night as if he'd never seen it before. It's as if he has to start over remembering the rules and concentrating hard every time he cracks open a book.

I just want to know if it will always be that way.

Reading to his sister, which is definitely a first, so I shouldn't complain. 

Notes on Thanksgiving

That is, notes about Thanksgiving that I wrote on the day of Thanksgiving.

The point of Thanksgiving, I've decided, is that it's one holiday the whole country can get behind.(Except the Native Americans, maybe. I'm not sure how they feel about it.) Instead of trying to smush a bunch of different religious celebrations into one time of year, everyone can just eat turkey and be thankful and watch the Macy's parade on TV and lapse into a tryptophan coma at the same time. It's pretty much like SuperBowl Sunday except you don't have to watch the game. And less finger food; you'll probably need to use a fork, at least to eat your mashed potatoes.

The other point is to provide a second holiday in the winter season, so that you can spend one with your own family and one with your in-laws. In a country this big, where people often end up far from where their families live, this is a very important consideration. You can't just do Christmas Day at your house and Stephen's Day (that's the day after) at his folks', and vice versa next year, the way we do in Ireland.

Further, another point of the whole thing is so that everyone can bond on Twitter and Facebook about how much they're panicking about it, how fabulous they menu they've planned is, how they're simplifying their lives and ordering out this year, how gross Martha Stewart's Twitter photos of food are, and how they've now eaten way too much and cannot possibly move off the sofa for another week.

And don't forget the way it provides a handy entrance point to Christmas. You can complain about Christmas creep all you like before Thanksgiving, but once that's done it's jingle all the way, baby, and no two ways about it. Many people put up their Christmas decorations as part of their Thanksgiving ritual, just to hammer this fact home.

Mostly, the point of Thanksgiving is to give the poor overworked American populace a chance to take a day off, or even three, without depleting their teeny tiny vacation allowance. They will probably spend most of this time stuck in traffic, but dammit, they will have their turkey.

And pie. Pie is very important at Thanksgiving.

Happy Thanksgiving, and thanks for reading, wherever you are.

A student

This is the first year that Dash has brought home letter grades on tests and reports instead of smiley faces and stars and mostly meaningless abbreviations like IP for in progress and PR for proficient. (The checkmarks and smiley faces and stars actually followed a progression that the kids were well aware of, so they may as well have been A's and B's and C's, really. But it seemed friendlier and less pressured.)

Dash never really asked what was in his report, and I never particularly told him. I said it was fine, and that was that. It was usually a mixture of IPs and PRs and an OG for reading. (That means "on grade" level.)

Dash's first report this autumn had a lovely line of straight A's. I was happy, and feel this slight improvement can probably be credited to his vision therapy. In general, though, he's a smart enough kid who's well-behaved in class, listens to the teacher most of the time, and is liked by the staff. I'm pretty sure that these are the traits that lead to A's from your teacher when you're in elementary school just as much as your test results and your homework does. (Especially in fuzzy subjects like PE, for instance. Then it's all down to how much the teacher likes you.)

I told him he had straight A's, and he was pleased, because he knows that's a thing that people aspire to.

I would like to leave it there, but in American schools there's this little thing called Honor Roll.

Twice a year (three times? I don't know yet) in our school, all the children who have all A's and B's or higher on their reports are deemed to be honorworthy, and they have an assembly to which their parents can come to watch them be presented with a certificate saying that they're on the Honor Roll. There are bumper stickers, even, saying that this car is driven by the proud parent of an Honor Roll student at your particular school. It's all made a bit of a big deal of.

For tedious reasons, Dash didn't actually get a second report this term, and therefore was not eligible for Honor Roll this time, but his teacher assured me that he would have been on it, and apologized for the oversight. (Okay, tedious explanation: what happened was that we had to un-enroll him from school when we went to Ireland, so that his absences wouldn't count against the school and bring down their average, and so his records were all inaccessible when the reports were generated. We've done this before and it's a simple matter to re-enroll him when we get back and he slots straight back in as if he'd never left. It's fine.)

Not only did I not care about the second report; I was actually a little relieved that he wouldn't be in the Honor Roll thing. And that seemed weird, so I put some thought into figuring out why I felt that way.

As a child who enjoyed reading and tended to "lick up to" the teacher, (pretty much the same as brown-nosing), I usually got good marks at school. But somewhere along the way I took in the fact that it was bad manners to ask what someone else got in a test, because that was tantamount to bragging about my own grade. Test marks were like salaries - you don't ask, but if someone else offers information you can reciprocate with yours.

So having a ceremony where you proclaim to the whole school that we're the smart kids doesn't seem fair.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they're showing the value of hard work and application. Maybe that's the only way you get A's and B's; but somehow, when you're seven years old, I don't think that's really it. Maybe they're proclaiming that they're the kids with the involved parents, the families where a parent is around to help with homework, where books are read as a matter of course, and, often, where English is a first language. I'm pretty sure all those factors also contribute to high grades, and those have very little to do with how hard the kids work at their studies.

Maybe I'm wrong, and all the other kids watch the Honor Roll-ees troop off for their assembly with nothing but goodwill and ambition in their hearts, happy for their friends and newly committed to learning all their spelling words this week so that maybe next time they'll be one of the hallowed few. Maybe, in fact, half of the kids at school are on Honor Roll, and the others couldn't care less about it. Maybe some kids would actively hate to be on it. Maybe it would destroy their street cred, and is just one more reason not to bother doing their homework.

I'm not sure I see the value of grades for elementary school students at all, for one thing. In general, bragging about grades (albeit in a fully school-endorsed way) sits badly with me. If Dash ends up on Honor Roll next time, I'm sure I'll go along to the ceremony and be delighted for him, but I'm not going to be the sort of parent who pays for grades, or rewards an excellent report card with an extravagant present. Not at this stage. Maybe never.

When I googled to find that news story I linked to above, it turned out that I'm not the only person who maybe thinks Honor Roll - or even grades in general - aren't the greatest idea ever. But apparently lots of other people think that the people who complain about Honor Roll are like the ones who don't want winners and losers in kids' soccer games because they want to protect their little darlings from ever feeling "less than." My point is exactly the opposite: I don't want a group of kids to feel that they're "more than," when - in elementary school at least - I think that hard graft and dogged perseverance are not major contributors to good grades. There are way too many other factors at play in the early years.

Tell me what you think. Do you think Honor Roll helps kids do their best, or would you rather it didn't exist?

Old dog, new trick

My dad is 84. I remember when his office got its first computer - I must have been around eight or ten. He would come home with tales of how the secretary - whom everyone loved and who, despite her glamorous blonde hair, was far from an airhead - had lost some file or other again, thanks to the silly machine. He had no time for this new technology. He kept his files, his records, his drawings, his specifications, his letters, safely and securely on paper, in filing cabinets, where they were swiftly to hand when the need arose.

About six years later the recession (the other recession, the one in the 80s) hit the building trade hard (history repeats itself) and with it, the architectural firms. His company was reduced to two men - himself and his partner, now the senior members - who retreated to their respective homes and worked from there, renting out the floor that used to be a workspace for thirty employees.

Luckily, we had a basement room that he could use as an office, and I remember the day all his huge hanging files of blueprints and plans were moved in, in giant cabinets that took up most of the space, leaving a thin passage for him to walk between, and of course a place for a tall stool at the angled drawing board. It may have been then that we acquired our first home computer - an Amstrad with a nice green screen and square type that functioned mostly as a word processor. It also had two games, which I played to death. It never occurred to us to get any more games for it, though I suppose they were available.

Luckily for us, my dad's partner is a couple of decades younger and an early adopter of new technology, so every time he upgraded his computer we would be the happy recipients of the hand-me-down. Thus we progressed, eventually, from the Amstrad to an Apple, and a newer Apple, and finally even one with a colour screen. I learned to type from Mavis Beacon on one of those Apples, for which I will be eternally grateful. There was even a modem attached by this time - a phone-line modem, the sort that crackled and screeched and cost as much as a local phone call - which in Ireland is not free. But nobody ever used it, because it was too much of a hassle, and the Internet was not very interesting yet, and it took a long time to work.

My dad only ever used the computer as a word processor, and continued to print out, photocopy, and file all his paperwork just as he had always done. He never saved anything, except by accident, so that every now and then I'd go home and try to clean up the desktop, littered with things nobody wanted any more. My mum used it too, for her official correspondence, in the same way. I set them up with an e-mail account, but they never used it. "I'm too old for that," my dad would say, self-deprecatingly, when I suggested that it might be nice to have. He couldn't really see the point. He continued to do his drawing work by hand, faxing things through to people who couldn't wait, sending letters by snail mail, talking on the phone. He was past retirement age, but he kept going as long as he had clients who would work with him in spite of his Ludditeism.

In only the last few years, things have changed. He really has retired now, the office downstairs is mostly disused, he and my mother face health problems of varying types. They have mobile phones, which stay nicely charged in their cradles, and are never used. I doubt either of them could figure them out at this point. Texting would be way beyond them.

But then. This is not a sad story of how technology that seems peripheral can become so central to life that people have difficulty interacting with you when you don't use it. This is a story of hope and new beginnings. Of old dogs who do, after all, learn new tricks.

Because my dad's partner, a good man without parallel, refused to give up on the idea of setting my father up with technology that could improve his life. He upgraded his iPad and gave Dad the old one. Dad got the house wired for broadband (though Eircom seemed to sit on that particular challenge for about six months). My dad mastered the art of the touchscreen, figured out that this one was pretty hard to mess up, kept at it, and now sends me an e-mail most days. I can send him little tidbits from our day, a photo embedded in an e-mail so he doesn't even have to click away to see it, and he and my mother can see into our lives over here, so very far away, from a new angle.

My dad doesn't like the phone. He's the sort of father who says "I'll get your mother," at the first opportunity when I ring home. If trapped, because she's not home, he'll talk about the weather, or current affairs. (He gets his news from the radio at 9am and 1pm and the television at 9pm promptly. Missing the headlines is a bad, bad thing. I put a shortcut on the iPad to The Irish Times website when I was at home, but I'm not sure if he's using that yet.) Anyway. I've inherited his dislike of phones, to some extent, so e-mail is the perfect medium for both of us. I don't think he'll be on Facebook any time soon, but baby steps are fine with me.

It's a tiny thing, but it's a great thing. If Steve Jobs is to thank for this, then I'm thanking Steve Jobs. I'm also thanking my Dad, who's not been feeling so great lately but has powered through and made himself keep at this, picking up the iPad every day and trying to send me a message, even though sometimes it doesn't seem to work, or the router has a red light and isn't doing what it should, or he might think he has nothing to say. I'm proud of him for finally admitting that he's not too old a dog after all.

The secret life of books

I started reading Charlotte's Web to Mabel last night. She's heard bits of it before, when B was reading it to Dash about a year (or more) ago, and she was concerned that she wouldn't like it. She asked me to promise before we started that the pig doesn't die. I said he didn't.

I didn't mention the spider.

I love reading books I loved to my children; but more than that, I really love having the exact copies I read to pass on to them. There's so much history there. Even if some of it isn't even mine. Case in point, this edition.

                                                 

I'm pretty sure I bought it at my local second-hand bookshop (the wonderful and sadly now defunct Exchange, in Dalkey). I couldn't tell you when, but I might have been around ten. It probably cost about 25p. It's a 1976 edition, and still has its original pricetag on the back:

I don't know where or what the APCK bookshop was, but I love that it was 49 and a half pence. The halves mattered.

On the inside, the plot thickens, because there's this:

This is a nuns' book! 

And further, this, written with one of those invisible-ink pens that didn't show up until you rubbed the other end over where you'd written. I had one of those pens, but Thomas Galin (sp?) is not me.

For some reason, I never wrote my own name in, but I can guarantee that it has been sitting on my bookshelf for longer than it sat in the library of the junior school at Mount Anville or on the shelves of one Thomas Galin. And now it can sit on one of my children's shelves, at least for a while.

******

I hope she doesn't get upset about the spider.

Creative excuses

I never really thought about nurturing my children's creativity. If I want their imaginations to grow, I should encourage them to read books, right? But I don't see why I have to get out the paints or bring glitter (devil's scatterings! fie upon it!) into the house. They can be creative outside, in nature, where it won't make a mess.

(You'd think I was immensely houseproud, wouldn't you? I'm just immensely lazy, and don't want to do any more cleaning up than is strictly necessary.)

Every now and then I try. I let them do some painting outside.

But then, even when I take away the paints because they're making me twitch, things like this happen.

Even now, you'd be surprised how often I just have to dump her in the bath.

So creativity is not something I actively think about supporting. But maybe I'm just sneakily using reverse psychology, because then my kids find a stray toilet roll holder or two, and it's breakfast time and Dash is meant to be finishing his homework, and before you know it, someone's fashioning a telescope and someone else is making a kaleidoscope.

But then, there's this sort of creativity, which I am much happier to get behind.

                                               


This post was inspired by Dreaming Aloud's Carnival of Creative Mothers, which I'm not officially taking part in, because I thought I had nothing to say, being not what I would think of as a "creative type". But if you are, or even if you just wish you were, you should check out all the other posts, and very strongly consider buying Lucy's beautiful new book, which comes highly recommended by people in the know.

Things about me

But first I have to steal one of my husband's points about himself, because it's so wonderful that it deserves a wider audience:

For some period around the age of 7, I became convinced I was actually Orinoco Womble. The Wombles merchandising at the time included chocolate bars, and I would look at my miniature pointy-nosed face in confusion when visiting the newsagents.

For full enjoyment of this fact, you have to know what both parties looked like: 

Stunning resemblance, no? (Also, clearly there's no argument about whose son Dash is.)

Now that there's no topping that, here are some much less interesting random facts about me.

1. I played Miss Prism in selected scenes from The Importance of Being Ernest in high school. I knew everyone's lines.

2. Around the same time that my future husband was posing as a womble, I used to hide behind the sofa when the Daleks appeared.

3. As soon as the weather gets cold, I lose all blood from my fingers and toes, which is very useful when I want to dress up as a corpse for Halloween but otherwise annoying.

4. I had three boyfriends in first grade, but not one more until after I turned 18.

5. I can still recite, phonetically and probably unrecognizably, the "We are now approaching a station; please mind the gap" phrase from the Prague city train system. I can also ask for two beers in Czech.

6. I have not, and never did have, any wisdom teeth. This does not mean that I am less wise than you, but rather that I am more highly evolved, so there.

Tell me a random fact about yourself.

Peas and carrots

Mabel: Me and A__  just ... fit together.

Aw, I think. What an adorable sentiment about her bestie.

Mabel: Like, he likes fire engines and ambulances, and I like it when people get hurt.


******


I keep trying to twist this around to getting her to say that she wants to be a doctor to help all these hurt people, but we haven't got there yet. At least she's not actively saying that she likes to be the one doing the hurting. No, she'll just be over there observing your horrible accident.

A little ghoulish, perhaps, but not downright psychotic. I think.

Don't call her cute

Don't call my daughter cute.

I don't mind. I think she's cute too, sometimes. But she'll have your guts for garters if she hears you.

A particularly chatty (and somewhat clueless) fellow customer in the supermarket made that mistake a week or so ago.

"You're just so cute," she said, in a cutesy-wutesy voice.

The five-year-old was unimpressed. "I'm not cute," she countered, with a steely gaze.

I asked her later why she doesn't like it - not because I disagreed with her stance, but just because I was interested in her reasoning.

"Cute means small. I'm not small. Babies are cute. I'm not a baby."

Fair enough. Much like Thumbelina, in her heart she's six feet tall. It's not her fault that grownups are all still bigger than her.

On Friday, the dentist's assistant tried to call her cute. Mabel was nervous about the visit, but I could tell this was galling her, so I came gallantly to her defense:

"She doesn't like to be called cute, actually."

"Oh? Well, what would she prefer?"

I took the opportunity to put some words in her mouth, since she wasn't feeling quite as perky as she had been in the supermarket, and I suggested, "How about, I don't know, smart?"

The dental assistant took that on board, though it's not as easy to believably tell a child you just met and who won't meet your eye, never mind talk to you, that she's very smart.

But you know what, you wouldn't tell a stranger you'd never met that she was very pretty. (Unless you were in a bar and trying to score, and bolstered by alcohol, and even then she might not appreciate it.) So how about you stop making superficial remarks about children in front of them, and instead, wait for them to talk to you first? That way, if they want to tell you about their new shoes or the fact that you're buying their favourite snack because it's their birthday next week, or that their favourite animal is the proboscis monkey, then you can legitimately have a conversation, at the end of which you might just be able to remark with sincerity that they are, indeed, a smart kid.

And then I will try to help them learn to take a compliment graciously, with a smile and a Thank you.

By contract II

I suppose I should mention this: I'm no longer a nursing mother.

If you're new around here you might not be surprised by that - after all, for most mothers whose youngest is five years old, breastfeeding is something that happened way back in the mists of babyhood; toddlerhood at least. But here's the thing: my babies were reluctant to stop. And I mean that most understatedly. They reacted to the idea of giving up the boob with screaming and terror and horror and gnashing and wailing of teeth, and frankly it was much easier for me to go along with that than to face their wrath.

I didn't go into breastfeeding with the intent of carrying on until my babies could write their own thank-you notes. I certainly have no opinions about how long anyone else should keep it up, any more than I have opinions about what you should have for dinner or how often, if ever, you should shave your legs. Eat food you like; shave when you feel like it. Nurse your baby for as long as it suits you and your child.*

I had been telling Mabel that we would stop when she was five ever since she turned four and a half and we didn't quite stop. We cut down from morning and evening to just morning at that point, and when I went on my Big Trip Away to BlogHer in July (for three days) she was just fine without. But our trip to Ireland was nicely timed to happen just before her birthday, and as I had hoped, the distraction of the different, of sharing a room with her brother and being in a new place was enough to break the habit quite easily. She only thought to nurse three mornings out of fourteen while we were there, and on the morning of her birthday was quite easily put off with a simple "No, you're five now. You don't need it any more."

So we're done. I'm not sad or sorry. I have no regrets about nursing for as long as I did, and I have no regrets about that part of my life being over. My babies and I had a mutually beneficial relationship for a long time, and though often the "mutually" felt more like "completely one-sided" in their favour, it was never enough for me to call a halt sooner than they were ready for. I'm not a martyr - far from it. I was always simply too lazy to make a stand against their will, because when it came down to it, the convenience outweighed the inconvenience.

So I can finally lay to rest the "Weaning" tag that I've used so often over the years here, as I considered, and attempted, and gave up on, and tried again with, and gradually approached the nirvana-like state of no longer breastfeeding. I've been wearing proper bras for a couple of years, actually, so I can't even go out and indulge in some fabulous lingerie; and I doubt my alcohol consumption will see much change.

It's a big milestone, but it's been so long coming that I really don't even notice the difference. Perhaps that's as it should be. We're looking ahead, not back.

* I'm talking here mostly about extended nursing. I do think you should start out by trying to breastfeed, if you're medically able to. I think that's a no-brainer. But if you don't continue for very long, for whatever reason, I'll assume that you did what you could and ended up making the best decision for you and your family. It's not my business to have an opinion on that.

Goosebumps

I go for a walk or a run, and I think, "This is great, recharges me, gets me into nature; I must do this every day." After about a week and a half I go again and think the same thing. Will I never learn?

Today I saw a flock of geese land on Greenbelt Lake. I don't know if they were coming in from Canada for the season or if they were just back from their morning consititutional, but I'm inclined to think it was a more momentous landing. First just a few, five or seven maybe, came in without too much ado, splashing down nicely and then just sitting still and looking calmly around as if they'd been there for hours. No panting or drama or exploring the new surroundings. Very un-human.

They were the front-runners. Then more small groups, one after another, swooping more dramatically low over the water as if they might change their minds up to the last second, when it was do-or-die moment and they had to either commit to the water or swoop up high over the trees for another loop.

Finally a big group, fifteen or twenty or maybe thirty at once all came down together, and the honking afterwards was much more pronounced. These were the also-rans, the hangers-on, the rabble. I imagined their arguments and complaints went something like this:

"Mom, mom, are we there yet? Is this where we're going to stop for winter? I'm tiiiiired."
"Do we have to stop here? There's a really nice lake further on. Can't we go all the way to the harbour? I want to keep going."
"No, this is where we're staying. Your aunties are all here already."
"He bumped me. You bumped me. I was coming in for a perfect landing and you messed it up."
"I did not."
"I was here first. Nyah nyah."
"Where are the snacks? Has anyone got the snacks? I want a worm."

And so on. It was worth going out for.

The Star Wars connection

We went to the playground on what turned out to be the last day before the weather got properly cold. We had nowhere else to be and nothing else to do. It turns out that if you stay long enough at a playground, the children will find friends.

Dash was hogging the digger in the sand area. I hate those diggers - the little kids are desperate to have a turn, but once they finally get their little bums up in that coveted seat, they find that their arms are too short and their feet don't reach the ground and they have no leverage to dig the sand, pivot, release. So they frustratedly have to return it to the big boys. I don't know why nobody makes miniature ones for the poor two-year-olds.

A small four-year-old boy hovered in the background, and eventually Dash was persuaded to give him a turn. As I predicted, he didn't last long before ceding it again, and I suggested that he help bank up the pile of sand from the ground instead. A few minutes later he was helping Mabel bury herself under a thin layer of fine, cold, fallen-leaf-riddled sand.

And then the three of them were off to the swings, and somehow Star Wars came up in conversation.

"I'm not so much interested in Star Wars," said Mabel. "I like Ponies."

Our new friend, the small four-year-old, turned out to have quite an extensive knowledge of Obi Wan and the others, and soon, in spite of their difference in ages and heights, he and Dash were firm friends. They all ran to the slides next. Mabel and Dash encouraged the friend to climb up the inside of the enormous tunnel slide.

I sat nearby, beside a very groomed mother, reminiscent of Annette Bening or Miranda from Sex and the City, and we laughed in unison as the dialogue floated down the tunnel and over to us. Mabel was encouraging the younger boy:

"Just a few more steps. You're nearly there..." They were about a fifth of the way up the huge tunnel at this point, but she was lying through her teeth and he was gamely giving it his all. Then a kerfuffle and a wobble in the middle of the tunnel, and they all came down in a happy pile, like puppies.

"Let's go back to the sand pit," said Dash, employing the Irish vernacular.
"Where?"
"The sand pit, where we first met," he clarified romantically.

Miranda and I were enchanted.
"You wore blue," I said.
"All those years ago," she reminisced.

And they were off again in the autumn sunshine.

My Little Pony birthday party

Excuse me while I go vaguely Pinteresty on you now for a few minutes. (But not very high-class Pinteresty. More underachiever Pinteresty.)

When I was thinking about Mabel's upcoming fifth birthday party a few weeks ago, it struck me that My Little Pony would be an excellent theme, but when I searched for some help online there wasn't much out there. So I figured I'd fill the gap in the market with a couple of half-assed suggestions. (That's a pun. Ass/donkey/pony. See? You're welcome.)

It was only very loosely MLP-themed, as parties go, but five-year-olds - or three or seven or whatever you've got - they don't need every little thing to match. Even if most of them didn't twig that there was a theme, as such, it doesn't matter, really. The birthday girl knew what was going on, and everyone had fun. It just gave us something to pull things together with.

I bought a cheap MLP colouring book at Target and ripped pages out so that everyone could do some colouring as they arrived. It's nice to have something non-interactive to help the children warm up to each other and their surroundings, especially if they don't all know each other already (mine did, as it happened). Alternatively, you could probably print some colouring pages from the internet.

The main event (mane! hah!) was what we I liked to call Thunderbolts Academy, which, as any good MLP viewer knows, was where Rainbow Dash went to learn to be a super-fast flyer - a sort of Top Gun for ponies. I modeled this activity on the Jedi Training Course we'd done for Dash's Star Wars parties: a simple obstacle course where the kids had a couple of things to jump over and walk along and crawl under in order to receive their prize: wings! Because now they're pegasus ponies!

I ordered fairy wings in various colours (but mostly pink, to be honest) from HaloHeaven. At $2 each, they're great value, and made a much nicer take-home gift than a goodie bag full of crap. (Because you all know how I feel about goodie bags.) I urge you to do this: there are few things cuter than a roomful of four- and five-year-olds unselfconsciously wearing wings.

One they'd got their wings, they played for a while before we had food and cake, and then we let them all outside to leap (like ponies) in a big pile of leaves that we'd raked up for just this purpose. (Obviously, good weather and an autumn birthday are vital to this step. We've been lucky in past years and usually manage to let everyone work off their sugar rush this way.) I didn't take any photos of the leaping in the leaves because I was viewing from inside, with a beer, and the other parents, most of whom elected to stay even though we'd said they could go. I take this as a compliment, though whether it's because they like the company, or the cake, or the beer, is not clear.

If you want some more structure, pin the tail on the pony would be an obvious game to play. Pony-shaped piñata, maybe? Or maybe whacking a pony with a stick is contrary to the theme; a dragon might be better.

My food was not pony-themed, because I bake what I like to bake for parties, and attempting a horse-shaped cake is way beyond me. Nobody complained about the rectangular chocolate cake (that didn't even have icing on the top), or the brown-butter Swiss meringue buttercream-frosted strawberry cupcakes, or my signature pigs in blankets - even if ponies don't eat pigs and they might be more thematically suited to a Peppa Pig party.

That's the lot. Send your little ponies home with their wings and a smile on their faces before the cake has quite worn off, close the door, and put the kettle on for a nice self-congratulatory cup of tea. You're done for another year.

Traveling by air with children: a quick checklist for the concerned parent

• The day before you leave, give everyone a backpack and tell them to pack the toys they want to bring. After they've gone to bed, remove 65% of whatever they stuffed in there. Add a couple of very small new things to generate goodwill and distract from what's missing.
• Everyone with a luggage allowance gets a rolly suitcase. This eliminates a lot of fighting over who gets to pull it; however, make sure you can fit the child one on top of an adult one for when they inevitably tire and have a hard time just carrying themselves.
• If traveling with a stroller, remember that you'll have to empty and fold it to go through security, and again to get on the plane. Do not stuff every last thing in there as if it were the trunk of your car. It is, however, invaluable for holding coats and backpacks once you've checked in. Sometimes you may even opt to let a small child sit in it - but then you'll have to carry the coats.
• Abandon hope of getting people to eat healthy snacks in the airport. Airports are for McDonalds opportunities. Burger King if you're pushing the boat out. If you must bring healthy snacks, save them for the plane when children are trapped and the options are fewer.
• A new coloring book or sticker book for the plane is a nice idea, and might even keep a child occupied. If you give a child under five a sticker book, be prepared to spend much of your journey pushing up the stickers from behind the page so that they can lift them off. Don't forget a nice new pack of crayons or markers for the coloring book. The ones you already have at home will definitely not suffice. A brand-new pack of eight for each child will do nicely.
• Being read aloud to is an option that many children are happy with. Choose a book you're comfortable reading in front of adults as well as children, because all your fellow passengers will be listening. (Alternatively, I believe audiobooks are a thing you can get. I'd look into it, but I think my husband secretly likes the attention.)
• Bring a large backpack for your own carry-on. On the outward journey it should contain 1) Secret new presents, only to be produced at the gate or on the plane, 2) Clean under/outerwear for children and/or adults in a large ziplock bag. 3) Diapers and wipes as needed. More than you think could possibly be needed, just in case. 4) More wipes, in the most easily reached pocket, in case you can't find the other ones. 5) Adult emergency chocolate/granola bar. 6) Book, Kindle, or magazine, if you're an optimist and think you might get a chance to read something.
• On the way back, most of this space will be filled with Christmas presents, birthday presents, large stuffed animals, baby dolls, new boots, or duty free alcohol. The children will manage just fine without extra new airplane presents at this point. Try to remember the baby wipes, though.
• If all else fails, feign ignorance. Those children? No, they're not mine. Perfect your gaze into the middle distance and don't forget the earplugs.

Another five

Mabel turned five on Monday, and I'm only now thinking to mention it on my blog. You can blame second-child syndrome, but it's mostly to do with all the other posts that have been brewing while we've been away. And the way she defies description, this child. I can't pin her down with a few choice words, because she is always so much more, so contrary that she'll be the opposite of whatever I say, so impossible.

My impossible girl. Impossibly loving, defiant, demanding, thoughtful, intransigent, accommodating, everything.

I have a soft spot for four and seven and twelve. I don't know why, but those ages hold magic. So I'm sorry to see my four-year-old grow up and on and become a five-year-old - or I would be, if it didn't mean that I get a five-year-old who is so much easier to deal with in so many ways than her one-year-ago incarnation.

Mabel is direct, I can tell you that. She knows her mind, and she tells you about it. She doesn't understand dissemblers; she's not one for subtlety. And yet - sometimes she'll pull my sleeve and bring my ear to her mouth and tell me something she can't keep in, but she knows she shouldn't say out loud. She's learning, and she's sharp like a knife, this girl.

And she's funny and smart and inventive and can craft a pun or a metaphor or a rhyme that impresses, and she's going places.

I can't wait to see where those places will be.

Wishes

One of the things I wanted to do on this trip was pretty easily attainable. I wanted to go for a walk up the hill. The hill that's close to my parents' house, the one we always went up for a walk, either to the quarry (turn left at the fork in the path) or the obelisk (turn right). One morning the sun was shining (intermittently) and the playground meetup I had planned was postponed and the stars aligned and this is what we did instead.

There's a broad wall to walk along most of the way, making the steps a lot more fun.

You can stop at the shop counter and sell a few twigs or a nice selection of autumnal leaves to the passersby.

And then, just before the obelisk but when you've come out to the breathtaking top of the hill, there are the wishing steps.

Walk around each level in turn, and when you get to the top you can have a wish.

Certain things earn wishes, you know. Birthday candles, of course; falling stars - but other things too, like the first strawberry of the season (also applies to rhubarb) and hopping three times around the base of a round tower. My mother has the definitive list, I believe.

They wished solemnly, to themselves. Mabel couldn't contain a secret, though, and had to tell me when she got down to the bottom again, that she'd wished for a new teddy. Because she's clearly lacking in teddies.

Dash wanted to cash it in as many times as possible. I had to decree that only three wishes could be had on any visit to the steps, because more wishers were arriving. Another family came along and we heard their mother tell them the same thing - walk around and when you get to the top you get a wish.

It's not written on a plaque or an informational leaflet anywhere. It's local folklore, it's how you tell the natives from the tourists.

It's important to know about the wishes. You never know when you might need one.

Recalibrate

Let's look at it this way: I'm lucky to call two beautiful places home. (Sometimes beauty is subtle. Sometimes you have to go away to see it at all.) I'm lucky to have family in one place and a family of friends in the other. My children are lucky to have two passports, to feel (a little bit) at home in two places, to know that America isn't the Only and that the way Americans say things or do things isn't the One True Way.

Someone asked me, or maybe they didn't but this was the question I answered, why we bring the children to Ireland every year. I want them to know their grandparents, of course, before they don't have them any more; and I want them to know their aunts and uncles and cousins too, because those relationships are real and special and not something that you can just pluck out of thin air. But apart from that, I suppose I want them to know Ireland enough that it's not a big, huge, special, once-in-a-lifetime place for them. I want it to be a normal place, somewhere they're used to being and where they feel, to a degree, that they can belong if they want to.

And maybe I look too far into the future when I declare that I don't want to grow old here where my roots are not, and that I don't want to give my children another place they could belong, in case they decamp and have my grandchildren there, far from me. Maybe I should just chill about that sort of thing, because they might move to Australia or have no children or never move out at all, and I might be unhappy about any of those eventualities too.

Maybe everything is just fine, and I'm lucky.

I know I'm lucky.

Shift

After two weeks in the country, my American twang has settled down and I sound pretty much Irish again. (All my American friends are wondering what I'm talking about. As far as they're concerned I don't have any American accent.) It just takes a little time for the shift to occur, as my ear gets reaccustomed to the intonations and the vowels and the nice crisp consonants.

I've been obsessed with black boots while we've been here. I've watched people go by from the ankles down, mostly. I've been to the Clarks shop at least three times. I've ascertained that shoes here are habitually a measurement wider than the regular size in America, which means that everything in the shop should fit me. I have to take advantage of this, because in the States I always have to order shoes off the Internet.

I cruised around the clothes shops a few times, but before I could commit to anything, I had to wait for my eye to shift fashion-wise too. And then I had to be realistic about what I would buy and wear if I lived here versus what I'll actually wear once I return to my jeans-and-tops real life in America. I bought a pair of black trousers that are slim-fitting enough and of soft enough material that they will function as leggings, but with more heft to them. They'll go inside my boots, and under long tops.

Then, eventually, I bought a pair of black ankle boots, after trying on every pair in the shop. I was delighted with them for a few hours, until they started to hurt my feet. So I brought them back and today, with my Irish money apparently burning a hole in my wallet, bought a different pair. These ones are less biker and more arctic, but they're definitely comfortable and will suit my needs better, as well as going with my skinny jeans and the black not-leggings in a very casual, not-dressy way. Which, to be honest, is the way I need them to be, for my casual, not-dressy life of grocery shopping and school pickups and the odd committee meeting.

Tomorrow we shift once more, back to Americans. And so it goes.

What you remember

My memories of childhood don't include my parents very much.

I think that's just fine. I don't think it's indicative of anything other than that my parents gave me my space and didn't helicopter over every little thing. (Additionally, I suppose, my memories of childhood are more of when I was eight or nine, say, than when I was four or five.) My mum was at home, my dad was at work. I played at friends' houses and they played at mine; I played outside on my bike with the other kids on the road, and I read books by myself. Lots and lots of books.

Watching Dash and Mabel going crazy together the other day, a friend commented that they're great friends. Well, yes, they're great friends who beat each other up and push each other's buttons and drive each other nuts on a regular basis. "They're very close," I said, because I think that describes it better. When someone habitually sits on your head or wakes you up by jumping on your belly or thumps you in passing because you told them what two plus two was and you wanted to work it out yourself, they're not so much your best friend as an unavoidable part of your day, every day. And because that person would defend you against bad guys and robbers and bedtime, and holds your hand walking down the street, and is always there to scream beside you as you jump up and down on the sofa, you're okay with that.

I love that. I never had it, and I love that they do. I love that when they think of their childhoods they'll think of each other, not so much of us. The parents should be a constant, that's all. A non-variable presence that provides security and stability and a sense of the where the edges lie - what can be done, what's available, how grown-ups behave in grown-up land. Everything else about childhood, really, is about the children.