Raising kids to be adults

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics 27% of men aged between 20 and 34 still live with their parents (and 18% of women). Bernard Salt, the Australian social demographer, has commented that because these men are at home "tied to the apron strings" for longer they are likely to have unrealistic expectations of their partners.

Well, if someone was going to pick up all your clothes, wash them for you, iron them, cook, take care of the bills, etc, allowing you to focus on all your ME time, why wouldn't you sponge off your parents?!

I've no problem with young people who stay at home with their parents if they contribute to the running of the household, but it seems these days that so many mothers love having their "little" boys still around and thus do everything for them to encourage them to stay. And so when they do finally enter the brave new world without Mummy to clean up after them their wives/girlfriends are quite likely going to get a bit of a rude shock as to how much mothering these guys are expecting...

I, on the other hand, have determined that I will raise a son who will be helpful to his wife. This means I am starting to train him now. The effort to get him to tidy up after himself is ongoing (and likely to be for many years yet - he does afterall have a messy mother who is trying to clean up her act), but I've been wondering about other things that I need to teach him around the house. We've also got to start focusing on him cleaning up his room - he doesn't really own that yet because we've mostly done it for him so far - so he needs to learn/work out where things will go when they are put away.

He loves to help with baking, but I'm starting to think of other cooking things he might be able to help with - such as topping and tailing beans for dinner, and other stuff like that, as long as the knife is blunt enough not to do too much damage... He wants to help with the washing up too, but at this stage I don't want all our dishes broken... perhaps I need to separate out all the plastics so he can learn to do those. He also loves vacuuming, so I normally let him have a go once I've done the main part.

When did you start to get your kids to help around the house? What are some other things that a not-necessarily-careful 5 year old might be able to help out with?

Refreshed

I'm clearly back from my mini holiday with my friend Megan. It was lovely and so relaxing. It wasn't a brothel, though Megan and I were convinced the people who owned the cottage were a lot taller than us (not particularly surprising since we are both height challenged) - a number of their decorating ideas were very high up, including an ornate mirror above the fireplace that only the freakishly tall would be able to see themselves in. It gave us a nice view of the light fitting that we could already see quite well in real life.

They also seemed to be particularly careful about not wanting their kitchen bin stolen - a cheap white plastic deal that was stuck fast to the floor. We were quite mystified by the effort.

We didn't do a whole lot - I read a whole book and started another, Megan read a few, we watched the whole of Lost in Austen in one sitting, I practised my controlled pyromania by keeping the open fire going (I'm pretty good at it actually), Megan worked the dishwasher (we don't have one in our house and I don't know how to use them), and we both did the cooking. We also visited a good number of bookshops, and I happily increased my collection of Lisbeth Zwerger illustrated books in the process. And we both took the opportunity to sleep in, unheard of in both our respective households due to the presence of young children. I even managed to sleep in past 8am! And the next door neighbours were reasonably noisy and treated us to a very loud Michael Jackson CD one afternoon while we played Scrabble - whilst we appreciated their generosity we decided to put our own CD on instead.

So we're back, and I've had the youngest member of the family clinging to me for most of the day yesterday. I was only gone for two days! But it was lovely and I appreciate my husband allowing me to nick off for a bit!

Flora

On the last weekend of the coming school holidays, the annual exhibition of the Botanical Art Society of Australia, Flora, will begin. It is being held in the Palm House, at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney, from Friday 24th July to Tuesday 4th August, 10am to 4pm daily, free entry. I will be the featured artist!

I finished framing my artworks this morning - I used to work in a picture framers, as did my sister, and then she taught picture framing at a local community college for a while, so has all the gear.

Just to give you a refresher, there's three: the first is of a strawberry I started when I was demonstrating botanical art at the Agricultural Open Day at the Powerhouse Discovery Centre last year, the second is of a stem of lavender, and the third is of a small branch of a vulnerable Australian native plant, Correa baeuerlenii. And I promise you, they look better in real life! All works are for sale, so you are welcome to come along and open your wallets!

Away

I'm going away for a couple of days with a lovely old friend, sans children and hubbies. We're going up to the Blue Mountains, and staying in a little house we've rented. I told my sister the name of the cottage and she responded "Isn't that the name of a brothel?" "I sure hope not!!" I replied in a slightly terse but vaguely worried manner.

So hopefully we'll come back rested, refreshed, and well read, from staying in a warm little cottage, decorated in the french provincial decor shown in the internet photos, as opposed to dingy red velvet and nastiness!

All done!

I had to email off the photos of my finished artworks today, ready to go onto the CD of paintings that will be available for sale at the exhibition. So they all had to be finished. So I stayed up last night and finished the third one - phew. All done! It's not a brilliant photo but you get the picture (like that?!). I'm going to frame it so that it's got quite a bit of space over on the left hand side... room for it to grow into!

Twinkle twinkle

One of the things I love at the moment is when the youngest member of the family asks me to sing "Twinkle twinkle little star". She starts it off for me: "Cwinkle cwinkle..." It makes me smile every time.

Hmmm...

We had our first school parent-teacher interview yesterday afternoon. Very happy with everything and no surprises. However, I couldn't get it out of my mind the whole interview that the Aviator's teacher has a haircut just like Brüno.... I'm just terribly terribly thankful that he doesn't dress like him as well!

Sickness visits our household again...

But at least it's not pox! No, my husband was home from work yesterday with something that is presumably not swine flu, nor whooping cough, and today I took the youngest member of the family to the doctors. She knew she was going to the "docca" and so we did the shopping and then brought it all home and she kept reminding me about the "docca". Once the shopping was put away I went upstairs to do a few things and then when I came back down I found her asleep on the couch. At 11am. And she's been trying to give up her sleep every second day. Definitely sick. Ear and throat infection. Antibiotics here we come.

The progress of the latest painting

I haven't been meaning to neglect you but I've been working hard on my painting. Here's the pencil sketch I did to start with, which has been very important, because although the specimen hasn't yet died (although the flower is starting to wither), the leaves have been moving around a bit, so the tonal information on the pencil sketch is invaluable.

And here's the painting so far. This is a scan, so it's not a brilliant representation...

What's next?

I've already finished the lavender! (The colours on the photo aren't brilliant...) It's probably the quickest botanical artwork I've ever done. Now to get started on the next one - I've got a small specimen of a vulnerable species with a very limited distribution in New South Wales: Correa baeuerlenii, Chef's Hat Correa. I've always been interested in rare and threatened species, and actually focused on them for my illustration degree, but this was one I didn't cover. I'm really looking forward to painting it. It's got the strangest little flowers... you'll see soon!