Birth of the Young Negotiator

The Young Negotiator is 16, turning 17 this year. He is a nice person, quiet and unassuming. He does well at school but his 'effort input' is quite sluggish and relaxed. He is not argumentative or difficult to get along with but he negotiates, man does he negotiate. It is all very polite and calm but every time we require something of large effort or of a big time user he has to negotiate with his father or myself. He has always done it. Even as a little fella' he would negotiate. I remember when he was preschool age he negotiated with his swimming teacher who stood about 1m in the water from the edge of the pool, where our little negotiator was holding on with firm determination, and asking him to swim the distance to her. "What if I just move along the side of the pool and I will get to you that way?"

His negotiating started in-utero. He was a large baby and was not coming into the world before he was ready. He was ten days late! Typical of him, no rush, no stress, no fuss. Had he been delivered on time or early he may well have fitted through my birth canal but no that was not to be. I was in labour for 48 hours because he was negotiating as to whether it would be warm enough or perhaps a bit bright for him out there. We went through a couple of shifts of the same staff at the hospital. The birth did not progress so they called in the obstetrician on call, who we shall name Dr Efficient but also Dr Lacks Bedside Manner. My strength was pretty much shot by this stage and so Dr Efficient tried a forceps delivery. Not successful, but when he tried to remove the forceps, one forcep arm did not want to come out. So off I go to have an emergency cesarean to have said forcep removed and, of course, the baby.

With the help of an epidural I had no feeling from the waist down. Dr Efficient had trouble getting the forcep out because the baby had threaded his arm through the loop at the end of the instrument. It was shiny and new and the baby liked it obviously. The baby was hard to get out because the contractions had wedged him tightly into the pelvis and he was LARGE and my pelvis not. I could feel no pain, like I said, but my body was being tugged and pulled at during the extraction of the little negotiator. (He is stubborn like his father). The first thing Dr Lacks Bedside Manner said when the baby was finally released from my battered body was "What a whacking huge baby!" He weighed 10lb 3oz or 4620g and he was 56cm long. Our firstborn had a concussion, split chin, footballers' eyes (swollen and nearly closed) and a paralysed left arm. My body was not much better. He was never in any distress before, during or after the birth. He had stitches in his chin and slept a lot. He fed four hourly and filled his nappy as babies do. He smiled and was easily amused. As babies go he was a dream. Nine months of physiotherapy fixed his paralysed arm. He had minor nerve damage but it is all good now.

We moved into our little cottage on the farm when he was six months old. The house is old and at the time needed renovating, rewiring and a functioning kitchen. It also needed screens on the windows. We had redback spiders, wasps and mosquitoes to deal with. It is not a project I would recommend to take on with a baby. For his first birthday we gave him (not literally) a set of kitchen taps. They know nothing at that age and the proud grandparents made up for any parental slackness.

Nothing much bothered him as a toddler, he loved to wear his sand bucket on his head and carry a broom so we called him Mr Bucket Head for a while. He would be easily amused and was happy with his own company from the beginning. His comprehension of life seemed amazing but I think children always amaze their parents.

He had a couple of minor mishaps. I had an old pram I kept for the paddock and our clothesline at the time was in the paddock with the cows. He sat in this pram while I hung out washing and the cows often visited him. A young cow rested her head on the shelter on top and fell asleep. One day I took him in this pram across the paddock to visit my neighbour. I was running, giving him a thrill. I assume he was smiling when the pram wheels unexpectedly hit an old and dry cowpat. The pram stopped suddenly and tumbled over, I fell to the side and the pram was upside down in the grass. I picked it up immediately to discover that the little negotiator's face had found a very new and fresh cowpat. The aiming could not have been more accurate. He started to splutter and spit and was tempted to cry. I cleaned him off as best I could and we commenced the run across the paddock again. He forgot to cry.

We used to have a male turkey, from an adjoining property, visit our chook pens and I knew nothing about them until one day it attacked the little negotiator and it was no longer welcome. There have been the odd rooster go him (they lived a short life) but all in all his life was pretty normal.

The young negotiator has tried different sports over the years. He is not a natural in the sporting world but has tried cricket, gymnastics, swimming, karate and is now a field hockey player. He has played hockey for about 6-7 years now. The only other sport he stuck at for any length of time was karate. He was only little and was inspired by those heroes of the screen, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He enjoyed the sport, he lacked the concentration and commitment required to achieve big things but was happy enough. His first sparring was memorable. He chose to spar his instructor who was a very tall teenager. We assume he picked the instructor because he knew that injury was unlikely to occur. On commencement of the fight the little negotiator rushed in, wrapped his arms around the young man's lower legs and sat on his feet. He sat there giggling and looked very pleased with himself. This is the kind of rumble that would happen at home with either parent and this obviously overrode any karate moves that were in his head. The funniest thing was that the instructor looked quite perplexed and had no idea how to respond. This little boy was not following protocol and it confused the instructor. We consider the little negotiator's first spar a win.

This year the young negotiator travels to Vancouver and LA for hockey. He applied to an organisation that takes teenage sporting teams overseas for different sports. It is not skill based but the simple act of applying and paying for it. He has a casual job in a supermarket and has paid for it himself. We are very proud his achievement. His team will be made up from teenagers from all parts of Australia and they will not meet until they travel together on the plane. They will play for the first time together in the first game against a Canadian team. He is beating his mother overseas! He has a passport. I don't have one. Cheat!

I'M BACK

Had a huge break over Christmas and New Year but am ready to get back into the swing of things.

Had good and bad Christmas. Had lovely friends, family and food - the three Fs. It was not stinking hot as it can be and we had fun.

On the down side my cat Cous Cous ate my canary Mr Peabody. My own fault. I left the cage door open by mistake and all I found was one satisfied cat and a few feathers. We were calling her "canary killer" for a few days. He was a lovely little guy.

My horse (the aforementioned Piece of Poop) has now been retrained and going beautifully and will be sold. She has been staying with a horse fanatic I met at a book launch. She was the author of a horsey book and when I emailed her about my Piece of Poop she wanted to meet me and we discussed her future. She is too much horse for me but would be an excellent pony clubber or ARC mount so she is on the market. This also saddened me as the outcome was decided the day after Mr Peabody's demise.

Mind you, we still have two miniature horses, geese, chooks and roosters, dogs and the cat. It is not as if I have any shortage of animals around me is it? But is it enough?

The geese, Bruce and Fanny, have me wrapped around their little webbed toes. They are so gorgeous and they love me you know. They are always excited to see me. They wait for me in the paddock if we happened to be walking in the same direction. These crazy geese have a very interesting habit of greeting our incoming or outgoing vehicles by running along side honking and flapping their wings. Apparently our vehicles leaving or entering the property is cause for celebration in the goose world. Our driveway is about 80 metres long and when we arrived home recently in one of our cars they came down to tell us something really exciting about their day of eating and pooing. They ran and flapped and called out to us with gusto but unfortunately they are not very agile. We had to stop the car suddenly to avoid a head-on with these crazy birds, one managed to veer off to the left but the other collided with a feathery thump on the other side of the car. Car and goose were undamaged but they are a bit more aware of the dangers of playing with traffic.

Every morning when I let Bruce and Fanny out to graze for the day I tell them at least two or three times that they are not coming into the yard as we walk together to the gate. Perhaps, four days out of the seven I mean it. They look at me, they talk to me, they wait patiently for me to open that gate for them. Damn it is hard. The best way is not to make eye contact.

We have a rescue greyhound who must not be fast enough on the track. We fostered her in 2006 and ended up keeping her. My daughter wanted to name her Layla (a lovely name indeed) but I like to give my animals names that I would not name a child. Anyway, having short-term memory loss at the time I could never remember the name I had picked and all I heard was my daughter calling her Layla. She learnt her name in one day and so did I.

This dog has been locked up in an old but comfortable shed at night when we go to bed ever since we adopted her. She has a lovely big bed, a biscuit and water. During the day she is with us in the house or in the yard with the other dog. Layla has developed separation anxiety. I don't know what happened but suddenly it was the worse thing in the world for her to go to bed at night. I don't think I appreciated the extent of her anxiety until I inspected the back of the door that faces into the shed. She had bitten and scratched it like a dog possessed. There is now a rabbit size hole in the bottom of the door. Her cot mattress that we picked up second hand for her to sleep on was ripped to a hundred pieces. One of the pushbike tires was removed from the rim and the tube destroyed. Wow, what a woman!

We decided to let her roam free in the yard at night for a few nights which we do not like doing. She is very well behaved but we did not want her bothering any wildlife and she tends to bark at the fruit bats, the possums, the wind, the imaginary axe-murderers, the foxes, who knows what! We lasted two nights. She wanted to come inside as well. NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. She is one very loyal but large dog. We would be tripping over her in the middle of the night because she has to be as close to you as possible and that means your bedside.

We had to work out what to do with her. We decided on tough love. Controversial sure, would it be successful? We had to try. We can be tough you know. We have chased foxes through the paddock in the middle of the night to get our goose back. We chained her to her bed in the shed. I put an old piece of industrial carpet on top of her bed to protect it, we moved the bikes and we gave her bones instead of biscuits to take to bed. I even gave her an old stuffed toy. Does this sound tough enough to you? Man we were bristling with toughness. I would give her cuddles, a gentle talking to, her bone and leave the door open in case there was some claustrophobia happening. She cried, she whaled, she barked and then for good measure she cried again. I visited her once and told her to think good thoughts. This was our night time routine for almost a week. She is one stubborn hound. Eventually she eased off and has since stopped altogether. Told you we were tough. She still would prefer to stay in the house but will go out voluntarily now and I still give her cuddles and a little advice and she is back to the biscuits. Just don't look into their eyes I tell you.