Kin-selected altruism ...

I have a new-found respect for parenting. Especially for stay-at-home mums. I now know from experience that parenting is an almost completely altruistic behaviour. I'll put my zoologist hat on for a second and say that, evolutionarily, a mother devoting herself completely to raising her children gives them (and her genes) the best chance of surving and reproducing. It's termed kin-selected altruism. And when I say that it's altruism, I mean that the benefit for the offspring comes at a cost to the parent. I'm finding that the biggest cost is my intellectual stimulation.

I'm spending too much time at home - picking up toys, knowing what's on daytime telly at any given hour, eating biscuits. I need to get out of the house more and I especially need some input to process and turn into creative thought. But does anyone know of any family adventures that have stimulation for mums too?

I think it's a real shame that most kids' activities only challenge the parents in so much as they are logistically difficult. Any mother out there will know: it starts with getting kids into the car - for me it involves carrying one down the stairs and putting him in the car, then trudging back up to get the other, along with all the stuff kids need; then there are the difficulties of driving with a screaming baby in the back. And I won't even go into the dramas mums face when we're single-parenting out and about (espcially with a bored toddler) because most of you will know, and because whinging isn't very fun to do, nor to read.

So what can we do that is stimulating for mums and not come at a cost to the kids? Any parental brain activity gained from a museum or art gallery is outgunned by the weaponry of a bored child. It's just not worth it. So the answer must lie in an activity that has something for parents and their young children. People looking for new business enterprises out there - I think you'll make a fortune if you offer a solution to this conundrum. I have a feeling that it's the Holy Grail though, and the only feasible solution is for mums to call in support. And who has the same genetic benefit in ensuring the kids' go forth into a well-adjusted adulthood? Dads. Honey ...?

A different wintery world

I came across this old email I sent when Ad and I were living in Alaska in 2005 and I thought it was worth posting here, it tells of such different days and made me realise our winters here are really not so tough. Happy (re)reading ...

"Hello again from the roof of the world!

I'm sitting in our new cabin looking out over the tallest mountain range in the US. The wind is whipping some snow from the rooftop, little birds dart around the birdfeeder and occasionally there's a squirrel that doesn't know it should be hibernating. Thankfully the solstice is edging its way into the past and we're gaining about half an hour of daylight a week. The path the sun takes is so short that we can watch it rise (around 10:30 am) and set (around 3:30 pm) from the same window.

Just before we moved here there was more snow in 2 days than all winter so far. The owners of the cabin couldn't leave the mountain until the snow plough truck had come through. Hopefully it won't happen again for a while, although the thought of being stuck up here for a few days is somewhat appealing. It's 10 to 20 degrees warmer up here than down in town and today it's around 30 below in town, but I'm guessing it's only about 15 below up here (which is probably why there are still squirrels running around). A few nights ago we came home to some very strange tracks in the snow outside our front door. They were bigger than my hand and had long claw marks. We're not sure what critter is wandering around outside but the candidates appear to be a bear (unlikely because they should be hibernating), a lynx (apparently there are a few in the area) or a wolverine!!! We're anxiously awaiting a flesh and blood sighting (ok, maybe not blood), and as I climbed the snow track up to the road yesterday to get firewood, I couldn't help but imagine a black bear watching me.

Ad's been spending the last few days down at the research station collecting muskoxen poo. Ahh the joys of his work. He comes home at night proclaiming "my next job will NOT involve poo", but we shall see. The long hours of research watching muskoxen sleep are thankfully behind us. The weather was unseasonably warm for the first week of our observations (which was when we had the huge snowfalls), so Ad decided to extend it for another week to catch some cold-weather behaviour. You gotta be careful what you ask for because it then hit minus 50! The little heaters in the hide struggled to keep up and I plugged draughts with toilet paper during the graveyard shifts.

The funding didn't come through so we're living on the breadline, but that's ok. It's a real shame I can't work but I'm taking advantage of the opportunity to slow down. I'm baking and knitting every day, learning how to spin yarn and riding out the joys and pitfalls of being a stay-at-home spouse. We'll probably wrap things up here in a few months and hit the road for a couple of months.

Other snippets of life here in Alaska:

• the Aurora has been really active lately and we can sit in our cabin in the warmth of the log fire and through enormous windows watch the dazzling display of green ribbons stretch and contract across the entire sky, feeding itself in some parts and withering away in others. Better than any fireworks display I've ever seen. Last night I watched it from bed.


• We're sick to god-damned death of SNOW. The roads are slippery (Ad had a prang the other night (at 50 below!), he's ok, everyone's ok, and we've skidded up to more than a few red lights, occasionally slipping all the way through them.
  
• The TV is awful, "Everybody loves Raymond" is on every channel at every minute of the day. WE don't love Raymond.


• The coins don't have denominations written on them, just "dime" or "nickel" and Ad's been here 6 months and still doesn't know which is which.


• There's no town centre, and the concept of a shopping mall hasn't taken off here: it's just a big sprawling mass of streets with each store having its own carpark. You drive to one store, get out into the cold, buy your groceries, go back into the cold, get in your car, wait for 10 minutes for the engine to warm up and dive to the next store, get out into the cold, etc. I figure it's just too expensive to heat a shopping mall.


• Driving is a big thing and it's so cold that the car exhaust doesn't dissipate, but hangs around in big stinky clouds.


• Coffee? I've all but given up. Last week I ordered a macchiato and out came a huge weak cappuccino. Just wrong!


• The scenery is spectacular and everything has frosting: pine trees covered in snow, letterboxes covered in snow, rooftops with a foot and a half of snow on them like the icing on a Christmas cake . Dog mushers dashing through the snow, chimneys, smoke.


• Probably most surprisingly, the people are great! Everyone I've met! They're so keen to tell you to have a nice day and stay warm that you'd think it was just a robotic response, but I really think it's sincere. Everyone is so keen to lend me things, I've been lent books, clothes, a wool spinner. It's a truly hospitable place.

Well, better go refill the bird feeder, need to put on a hundred million layers to go outside.

Stay cool and stay in touch. Lots of love Tan & Ad xx (19 Jan 2005)

Pics of our Boys

Mothers' Day 2010

Rory painting Mothers' Day cards.

A beautiful Mothers' Day morning with Granma, Gramps, Nanny & Poppy by Sydney Harbour, the day after Jeff & Joss's wedding (I'll try to get some pics of the wedding).

A scarey huffy puffy time

Remember all that stuff I wrote about enjoying the journey and it being ok if you end up somewhere you hadn't planned? Well, bin it. Forget I ever wrote it. We've just had a little adventure that we'd rather we didn't have.

It all started on Wednesday with our Monkey Boy producing some snot, a lot of snot. Then by Thursday there was a cough and a little wheezing, a doctor's visit and misdiagnosis. Overnight Monkey Boy's wheezing increased, he would wake in a panic and then vomit. The only one who slept was baby Bugalugs who was blissfully unaware of the unfolding drama. Having faith in the doctor's diagnosis that it wasn't asthma, just a cold, we didn't take him in to hospital overnight, but now we know better. By Friday morning our little Monkey Boy couldn't speak a single word without pausing to breathe. On arriving at Emergency the triage nurse ushered us straight into the Resus Room and our poor little boy was nebulised and ventilated pretty heavily. He was scared and pale, crying and weak. I now know that asthma can come on suddenly and dramatically in someone who'd never shown a symptom in the past.

It's not a lot of fun for a 21 month old in hosiptal. His father, who was running on about two hours' sleep for the past two nights, stayed with him overnight as they ventilated him every hour. We were eventually allowed to bring him home on Saturday afternoon.

Monkey Boy is now learning to accept his puffer. As I watch him sitting in his high chair, cuddling his sippy cup of apple juice and refusing his day sleep (again!!!), I'm still shellshocked and incredibly thankful that it all turned out ok.

Roadblocks, or just life?

Have you ever decided to dive into a new project, excited with an idea of what it could be, only to find it just won't happen the way you imagined? This could apply to all sorts of new projects - a new garden bed, planning the route you'll take on holidays - and the frustration of missing the mark is still the same. Well my new project has been to get this blog up and running so anyone who's interested can read about the latest goings on in the house of Munn. It is intended to fill in the gaps created by phone calls not made, emails not written, coffees that just haven't happened, etc, etc (although it's by no means as personal). But the roadblock to my new project is the same as the one in the way of the phone calls: children.

I struggle to comprehend how any woman can maintain inner peace in the face of raising children. Are all of you feeling that sense of only just holding your world together? It doesn't appear so from my vantage point, so are you masking the chaos with birthday cards sent on time, a car that is shiny and vacuumed, garden beds that aren't smothered by weeds?

I'm only new to the responsibility of raising children, plural. Eight weeks into it I'm just coming up for air. I know that one child under two is a handful, and it's lucky that I have two hands, because two under two is testing me. I fail to understand how my own mother managed three of us under two. And the biggest mystery to me is how anyone does it when they have really difficult kids. My two are both relatively good boys: the newest (known to us affectionately as bugalugs) doesn't cry much, sleeps well and does all the things a good baby should do. And monkey-boy, the older, is sweet, affectionate and amazingly good at telling us what he wants. But still every day has its roadblocks. I wake up in the morning with an idea of what we'll get done today, but as the day unravels those things move onto the 'to-do' lists for future days. So I'm thinking that perhaps it's not roadblocks but just life that gets in the way. And a more enlightened way is just to allow the roadblocks to redirect the day to a new, unexpected place. To meander rather than planning the route. And yes, sometimes that place is sitting on the lounge with a crying baby and a naughty toddler that didn't want a day sleep, ringing my husband to see if he'll be home soon, typing this blog with one hand just so it gets done. But sometimes it will be a funner place. And no matter what there are always the moments that make you laugh out loud.

Monkey-boy and his dad were in a hospital corridor when monkey pointed 'look daddy, lady in a wheelbarrow'. The lady in the wheelchair didn't seem to hear but her carer smiled.

So here we are, the blog has finally been created and we're off into the unknown. I hope you'll enjoy the journey too.