Milk Teeth…

After weeks of red mouth, spotty chin and painful moaning Joel’s first teeth have broken through. Two, in the middle, at the bottom to be precise.

Kylie has all her teeth now, thankfully. When Kylie had a tooth making headway through the gums the whole universe got to know about it. Joel is not as bad as Kylie was but he has not got molars. Yet. Exciting times. Trying to get Kylie pinned-down for her daily teeth brushing is an exercise in strategy, skill, stealth, manoeuvrability and, when she has been caught, brute strength. It’s not that she minds having her teeth cleaned, she just turns it into a game of “catch me if you can/ hold me down if you can”. When we have finally caught her and when gasping for breath we try to keep her from squirming away, she often bites down on the brush, rendering it immobile in her vice-like jaws. This she does with a massive, teeth-clenched smile on her face and with giggles erupting from the pit of her belly. The threshold for parental sense of humour failure is around about this point of the game. What was meant to be a simple two-minute task is turned into a fifteen minute tag-team wrestling match with a Barney toothbrush. Needless to say that toothpaste often ends up in the hair, under the chin, behind the ears and eventually in the mouth. Welcome to parenthood.

Yet to not go through the (massive) effort of cleaning the milk teeth regularly and of teaching a child good habits is to set them up for greater pain later. Think holes, infections, dentists, drills, needles, medical bills – you get the picture. I have found great value in learning how to take care of what I have been given. The less I wash my car, the quicker it rusts. Not backing up my data will lead to the loss of my whole life, well almost. Spending quality time with my family leads to better family life, closer relationships and fewer arguments. The Bible calls it stewardship. As God’s image-bearers everything on the planet has been given into our care. If we tend to all we’ve been given with unselfish love then it will support us and provide for us. People, animals, rivers, plants air, sea, our bodies, our spirits, our minds etc. This is the inconvenient truth to beat all others. It’s all connected and we are responsible to take care of it all. Fail to steward one area properly and it affects all others. Philosophers call this Chaos Theory, or The Butterfly Effect. Earl calls it Karma. But we won’t get into that now.

So we will be buying Joel his own toothbrush and we will start brushing his two teeth as soon as they are brush-able. Gotta keep the world turning.

“And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up” Galatians 6:9

Superheroes…
There are a few lines of this song entitled “Superman” by the band Five for Fighting that are part of who I am.

“I can’t stand to fly, I’m not that naive. Men weren’t meant to ride, with clouds between their knees. I’m only a man in a silly red sheet, digging for kryptonite on this one way street. Only a man in a funny red sheet, looking for special things inside of me”

You know how in the Superman movies, nerd guy Clark Kent enters a telephone booth or a secluded alleyway and comes out transformed as a basically indestructible superhero in a really tight leotard? Life doesn’t work that way right? At least not for us mortals.

Caryn and I were married for two and a bit years when these photos were taken in the beautiful city of Durham, England. By the way, Durham boasts one of the top universities in the world and the greatest (and sublimely beautiful) Normal Cathedral in Europe. Kylie had been swimming around inside Caryn merrily for twenty-one weeks at this point. We are now into our sixth year of marriage and we love each in so many more ways now than then.

Yet there are times when things break down. This is so often a matter of the heart not being in the right place and when it happens communication becomes hard and painful. Things get said out of a place of unrest and perhaps accumulated negativity in the heart and before you know it someone is wounded; usually both of you since married couples tend to love a good volley.

That’s why I felt the telephone booth was such a great analogy for what can go wrong and right within a marriage. We are not closet superheroes who can save the world and save each other’s lives, marriages, children and so on with a simple transformational procedure like the one Superman does. All humans are broken and fragile, carrying around wounds that are partially healed or open and it is so easy to act and react out of our hurt when someone presses there. Perhaps what we can do though is go into the booth together and talk about our pain, the places that hurt. Not so that we can have an up-close and personal blame game, but rather a time of confession, of soul-baring.
"Sorry" is always the door to a conversation like this. Relationships can become sterile deserts, bleak, harsh and unliveable instead of the life-giving oasis they were intended to be. Without an apology there can be no honesty. We need to talk about our weaknesses and ask for help. Much like the songwriter for the song above. Great empathy and compassion is aroused when we understand each other and why we are the way we are. This is not a quick fix but a rocky path that can be long but which leads to ever more frequent sanctuaries of rest, peace and wholeness between us.

We so badly want to change the world as people; we all dream of doing superhero stuff. The greatest heroes start with their own hearts, admitting their weakness. Then they work to reconcile their marriages. From a strengthened heart and restored relationships the world can become a better place.

One person, one family at a time.
“…and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:3; ESV).

The Pot Stirrer…
Kylie is incurably curious about everything at the moment and wants to be involved in many of the details of housekeeping. Except cleaning up and packing away her daily tornado of mess that is.

The other day I was making potjiekos and she offered to help me stir the onions. She loved it and seemed to get such a great sense of worth out of feeling like she was contributing to something meaningful.

This got me thinking about how many times I so easily assume that she is being naughty when in fact it is me who is not relating to her properly on her emotional level. I just learned (through books and friends) recently that when I tell Kylie to do something in an authoritarian way I am bypassing her free will, a fundamental human value and one Kylie treasures. By doing this I naturally invite rebellion. Nobody likes being told what to do. She then says no, and I end up shouting at her, or worse. This escalation is pure failure to misunderstand that my daughter has a younger intellect and emotions that are not yet manageable. Not sure if ladies ever quite get the managing part perfectly right but that’s another post for another time. (I think I’m gonna get creamed for that one).
The new approach that I have learned is to first show her that I understand her crisis, acknowledge her feelings. “Kylie I can see that you are angry with Daddy”. This makes her feel heard. Secondly I empathise with her. “Daddy also gets upset when he has to….” This connects with the emotional place she is at and makes her feel vindicated. Her feelings are not good or bad, they just are. Thirdly I look for ways to solve the problem together. This is the difficult part but when, say for example we come to the decision to pack toys away together, she is getting a value instilled by example and by cooperation. This is a double reinforcing of good values. Lastly praise. By now she will have sensed great feelings of solidarity and worth by the joint completion of the task so when she is praised for doing it, it will be the icing that seals the lesson.

This really works by the way. I have now tried it a couple of times. I don’t always remember to stop and consider her first before I lose control and blow my lid (thereby giving her an example of what to do in a similar situation when her will is blocked), but when I do it almost always works.

I say almost because when I forget or when the situation deteriorates I need to remember that I can be just as big a pot stirrer. And then I wonder where she gets it from.

Blue Monday...
Mondays have an almost mythical blue-ness about them. The weekend starts on Thursday evening as one starts to anticipate the weekend and all around you just feel the spirit of TGIF. The number one Facebook status on Friday is, well, you know.

But not for most pastors. For us the weekends are just the beginning of our working week; Mondays are like Red Bull for us. In fact, the only blue in my Monday was the Tanzanite canopy of the sky on this rare, windless twenty four hours in Jeffreys Bay.

Kylie and I have needed some bonding time since I feel like all I do is reprimand her lately; me being a grumpy old fart and her being a precocious little 2.5yr old. Not a happy mix. So we hit the beach this afternoon whilst leaving Caryn and Joel to gel back home; not that the latter relationship needs any encouragement. We live one street, or, in a straight line, 150 metres from the beach. This translated into a 3 minute walk on my own and a 15 minute walk with Kylie.

She picked almost every wildflower growing through the cracked pavement and stopped to point out a house under construction, very troubled that it was "broken". We had a great swim in the waves, dug holes in the sand, sat in the holes and got covered up, dug our toes into a beached jellyfish, skimmed (or simply chucked) stones across the water and had some good laughs. Some moments you wish you could just push pause. This was one of them.

Life goes on but for one Dad, I will giftwrap this memory and keep it for when the weekends are like Mondays for everyone else.

Prison Break...
Boys will always have the potential to become little troublemakers, let's be honest. The adage, boys will be boys, was coined for a reason. But if you want to double the trouble put a boy in a vest.

Perhaps its a boy's natural inclination towards self-appreciation and body worship but when a boy is in a vest he is making a number of statements. Firstly, "I am confident and self assured and by the way I'm pretty hot stuff". Secondly, "I'm invincible". Thirdly, "I'm now going to try and prove my invincibility". Bring on the kryptonite!

I remember once when I was in Std 8 (Grade 10) I went to a boys only, combined schools Winter Camp in Barbeton. It was called Veld School and it was compulsory, as many things were back in the 80's. Our school bus full of boys stopped off at Middleberg for refreshments and the other school's bus arrived at the same time. I was wearing a vest at the time and when I stepped off the bus the boys in the other bus (I learned later) marked me out as a troublemaker. Simply because of the vest. And probably because they correctly perceived the whole Alpha Male thing. Needless to say I was the safest person on camp.

My point? I love Joel in a vest and so does Caryn. His chunky arms and legs pop out of the garment and say, "Do you feel lucky? Well do ya punk?" I can just envision, a la Brad Jones, Joel getting ink all over his arms and strutting around in his vest like the peacock that owns the world. And even if he never causes any trouble in his life, at least people will think that he has the potential to.

Did I mention that Joel will be auditioning for season 5 of Prison Break?

Crash...
The next morning, Sunday, we checked out of our hotel room and drove to Café Creole, a delightful coffee shop owned by acquaintances of the bridal couple. They opened exclusively for the Cranna family, a few wedding crashers and us. We pigged-out on every cancer, fat, life-shortening food you can think of but had so much fun in the process. The Crannas have a super family and it was great getting to know them.

Sadly our time was drawing to an end and we needed to get to the airport so we said our goodbyes. Stuart gave us a lift to the airport in Andrew’s Car, a red Hyundai that he had generously let us use for the whole weekend. We were 5km from Durban North on our way to the airport and … crash!!
This guy in a blue-grey souped-up Fiat Uno turned in front of us at the last minute and Stuart had very little time and space to react. He held the car steady and braked sharply, the tyres skidded and screeched. We lurched forward, straining against our seatbelts and within a split second we heard a sickening crunch as we collected with the Uno. The front of the Hyundai went into the passenger side door of the Uno and sent it veering off to the front and left. We got out of the car immediately (no airbags to pick out of our teeth), checked every bone, inch of skin and muscle and ascertained that at worst we were shaken and a little stirred but nothing more. Joel, Kylie, Caryn, Stuart and I were all fine. The driver of the UNO slowly crawled out of his car, walked over and if I remember correctly the first words out of his mouth were, “Hey man, there’s no need to involve the cops in this, we can just sort this out ourselves”. Likely my friend! To be fair, he did have a mullet and a distinct Southern Johannesburg accent. Can’t expect too much right? His “partner” and passenger, whom we guess was a professional entertainer of sorts just disappeared, walked away.
While Stuart was phoning the cops and the insurance company the driver himself vaporised, leaving his car unattended. Maybe he went to buy some milk and bread, but we’re guessing he needed to work a fair dose of telling chemicals out of his system in a place where police with breathalysers were not. Loren, Stuart’s wife, came to our rescue, packed us into her car and whisked us off to the airport while Stuart was left behind to pick up the pieces. We couldn’t help but feel for Andrew at this time, who had so freely lent us his car and who was now on honeymoon at the Cavern. Not a great reward for generosity, but then God can never be accused of working in easily discernable ways. Especially when inebriated South African’s with mullets are involved.

We made it to the airport on time and then began the next leg of our journey, see Flying High. The Crannas are beautiful; they gave us the best weekend ever and made many memories for us.

A toast; to the Crannas. If you are going to drink to them, don’t drive :-)

The Wedding...

The ceremony started at 2:30pm on the Saturday morning and Debbie was not a minute late (accountant - internal audit - makes sense), looking stunning in her dress as Andrew stood at the front of the aisle, like a deer in headlights (software developer - makes sense) gazing at his bright, beautiful, fated future. With the vows vowed and the rings exchanged Debbie and Andrew were husband and wife. A wedding ceremony is something that is never easy to get over; it is mystical and magical, and this was no exception.

Photos followed around the church gardens and the Durban botanical gardens, the latter of which are impressive to say they least. Kylie couldn’t work out why the photographer had no interest in her and felt quite snubbed. So she hung around Mommy who was circling the stone colonnades. Joel eyes were still locked on their targets, of course. Couldn't let the twins out of his sight. We made our way to the reception which was held at the regal venue of the Royal Hotel. The speeches were great, the MC’s and the Groom’s especially; they were God-honouring. The Best Man was a bit risqué, but pulled though just fine. The food was good, the cake was sublime and Kylie persuaded everyone to get onto the dance floor with her Teletubbies rendition of a “tap-shoes boogie” shortly before Caryn whisked her off to sleep on a chair in an adjoining rest area.
What amazed me was that Joel and Kylie slept through the noise like little angels whilst the less religious Baptists burned the dance floor to the ground. Heather, Andrew’s sister, did not stop dancing for a second; she’s a great lady who can clearly dance anyone under the table. Andrew and Debbie took their (much anticipated I’m sure) leave at 10pm and disappeared into conjugal bliss whilst the rest of us tried to find our cars in the hotel parking lot and then made our weary, but satisfied ways home.

The Hotel...
Our accommodation in Durban was truly heavenly.

A kind member of the Durban North Baptist Church sponsored our family (and others) a long weekend stay at the Umhlanga Sands Hotel, a beautiful 4 Star hotel on the Umhlanga waterfront. We were on the 16th floor, I loved it. Check out the view from our huge sliding glass windows. Kylie kept wanting to get out of the window/ door and onto the very narrow ledge of the balcony. We were not too happy about this and so the doors stayed firmly shut.

Caryn was a little nervous and claustrophobic in the lifts but their was no need to fear as they were noiseless, fast and efficient. They must have been very well serviced. The room was huge, children's bedroom with beds and a kitchenette, well outfitted bathroom with a shower-bath combo. The main bedroom had a huge king size bed with comfortable mattress and bedding and their was a lovely table next to the bed for breakfast etc. The table was right at the window. From the window you could see all the ships waiting to berth at Africa's busiest harbour. We counted 14 but I believe that it can go up to thirty ships in the queue. We also saw plenty dolphins charging the waves and playing amongst the surfers, it was so tranquil.

One of the funniest and simultaneously most frustrating events in the hotel room was when we were running a bath. Caryn, Joel and myself were on the bed chilling and waiting for the bath to run when Kylie disappeared very quietly. All of a sudden we heard a change in the nature of the water sound and then a huge scream and cry. It turns out Kylie had pushed the button that switches the flow of water from bath to shower and the shower head (which was not set up and low down near the taps, facing in her direction) had sprung to life with great force all over Kylie and all over the bathroom floor. We used every last towel in our room to mop up the water from the floor. Then we bathed, this is Joel and I in the bath, him resting pensively on my feet. He's a deep thinker, like his Dad. One of Stuart Cranna's nicknames for me is Don the Ponderer. Sorry Joel. The bath was a blast though. Can't exactly remember how we dried ourselves thanks to Kylie.

Staying at the hotel was a blessing. Lots more happened but my intention was to share just a little of our news, not to bore you.

Next, the wedding.

Flying High (Part 2: The Return Trip)...

We boarded the Kulula.com 737-200 which was plastered in all its green glory, much to Kylie's delight. "Green airplane Mommy"! We made it to our seats, each carrying the requisite 100 bags per parent. Airlines are very gracious to parents. The kitchen sink and the pram went into the hold. We strapped ourselves in, ignored the cheesy overdone (Kulula must change this) announcements and safety instructions (getting told that if the plane nosedives it is standard procedure to place your head between your legs and kiss your tushy goodbye is just not funny to any passenger, sober or not) and were pushed back out of the parking bay and onto the taxi way. After sitting for 10 minutes in the same place we were told that there was a hydraulic problem that was being investigated. Comforting. My own hydraulics also started having problems, right about the same time as the announcement. Coincidence? Another 10 minutes later and the hydraulic problem had evolved into a starter motor problem. Another 10 minutes later (Kylie starting to get serious ants in her pants) and the next announcement cheerfully (not joking) informed us get off the plane, the problem is not immediately solvable. At this point Kylie broke down. We carried her out of the aircraft sobbing her heart out. She loved the green airplane and had become emotionally invested. I eventually managed to convince her that some men would come to fix the plane and that we may be boarding again soon. This seemed to cheer her up, but not much.

We made our unamused selves into the British Airways Business Class Lounge, the concession for our pain, and one whole aircraft full of people cleaned out their complementary peanuts, chips and drinks in about 2 minutes flat. Lesson; unhappy, delayed passengers eat their way to revenge. After an hour in the lounge we were informed that British Airways (BA - Kulula's holding company) had managed to find some open seats on other airlines and that anyone wanting to get home sooner should approach reception. With my own two eyes I witnessed men, women, the elderly and people with walking aids scale couches, counters and tables to get to the reception. People were trampled and crushed in the scramble. It was amusing and sickening. I just sat patiently waiting for the inevitable priority that is given to parents of small children. When the appeal was made for parents Caryn and I smugly stood up from our couch and nudged our way past the piranhas and other varieties of closet wild beast that had formed a blockade in front of the reception desk. As we walked past them they actually hissed and snapped! Welcome to debased human self-preservation.

Needless to say we got on that flight, a beautiful SAA Canadair Regional Jet (Americans call them Puddle-Jumpers) with leather seats and meals that you didn't have to pay for. My compliments though to the BA staff who had to get our luggage off the green aircraft, bring it to us for identification and re-tag it, making sure it was placed safely on the Puddle-Jumper and didn't end up in Nelspruit the next day. They did everything with a calm, positive, can-do attitude and took pains to make sure that we were comfortable and ushered onto the next aircraft as soon as possible. We were meant to land in PE with Kulula at around 3pm. We landed with SAA at 07h45pm and got home to Jeffreys Bay at 9pm. Exhausted but grateful and glowing from the adventure. It was longer than we had expected but it was great fun. We kept our heads level, our hearts at peace and we just went along for the ride. God took care of the rest, took care of us. I highly recommend a good attitude of peaceful trust in difficult situations. It rubs off on your kids, who were both little angels and, like their parents, just enjoyed the journey.

So this was the account of our two flights. What happened inbetween to follow.

Flying High (Part 1: The Trip There)...
We left on the Thursday on the white aircraft, a Kulula.com leased Boeing 737-200.

Kylie has been amped for this trip since we first told her about it three months ago. I had prepped her by us spending time watching dozens of commercial aircraft take-off and land on the Internet. But when it came to the crunch and Kylie stepped out onto the apron at Port Elizabeth airport her little knees were knocking and she wasn’t so sure anymore.

Joel was oblivious to everything except trying to maintain visual contact with his mother’s milk makers; it is after all still a matter of survival for the guy. As long as he had his two friends in sight he was a-ok. But Kylie made it into her seat and as son as she was strapped in she was loving it, take-off, landing, everything.

The take-off was her hands down favourite and she giggled her way through the whole thing as the engines roared, as she felt herself being pressed back into her seat and as the aluminium tube lifted into the sky. She was a star. Smarties and fruit juice helped. Alot. The trip to Durban was blissfully uneventful. The return trip was anything but. Check out Part 2.