Crimperman.org

I came across this video the other day. It’s cute and one of those ones that can make you go “awww” but as I watched I started to think about the parallels we have with the baby squirrel. Watch the video, I’ll explain afterwards…

… So here’s what struck me:

• sometimes what stops us is the knowledge of how to progress
• when the knowledge is there the problem can be lack of courage
• even when help appears it may not be in the form we expect and tackling that requires a whole new batch of courage and knowledge
• perseverance works if you are a) motivated, b) encouraged and ultimately c) helped

But you know what really struck me? It was the big squirrel. To me it seems to get very frustrated yet it keeps trying to get the baby to jump – even to the point of pushing it up the wall. I looked a that squirrel and I wondered how often am I not like that? How often do I allow my frustrations to get the better of me and I end up giving up on someone who needs help? How often do I give in too easily and just help the other person take the short-cut? And how often am I the baby squirrel without realising or recognising it?

Fizz the puppy

We have a puppy!

Fizz is nine weeks old and is what used to be called a mongrel. She’s what my dad calls a “Heinz 57″. She’s a mutt and we love her. Her dad was a collie of some kind and her mum was part-labrador, part-spaniel, part-pretty-much-every-other-breed I think. She’s very cute and like all puppies she manages to capitalise on it.

As with any puppy, Fizz needs to be house-trained. Being thoroughly modern owners we’ve read “Puppies for dummies” and searched every dog website there is. Most of them seem to be thinly disguised adverts for dog products of some kind. We decided to invest in some “pee pads”. These are the inside of a nappy spread out into a square and they are impregnated with some chemical that allegedly attracts puppies to pee on them. They are the modern equivalent of having newspaper all over the floor. The idea is that they make it easier to train your puppy to go on the pad and then you gradually move the pad closer to the door and eventually outside. This trains the puppy to pee outside.

Dogs can’t read

I know that’s obvious but in our research we forgot that Fizz did not read “Humans for dummies” or browse the many “How to train your new owners” Dog websites. Specifically she did not read the instructions on the packet of pee pads. She didn’t know what they were for nor that they were for her own good. In short she didn’t use them. No, she actually hated them. The wunder-chemical did nothing to attract her to them and whenever we put her on the pad — at the allotted time or when she looked like she was wanting to go — she would sit with that “naughty puppy” look on her face then after half hour of nothing we would let her off and she would pee on the rug. The one time she did “go” on the pad, it was more by fluke than design – we still heaped much praise on her as instructed but it was a one-off. She was getting good at recognising when she needed to go but had no desire to go where we wanted. Such is the way with puppies.

So what could we do? Three days of this had left us with a puppy who was in danger of becoming neurotic about paper on the floor and was still peeing and pooping everywhere else. She seemed to understand this wasn’t the plan but it was like she felt she had no option. We decided to skip the pee pad and starting taking Fizz into the back garden. We had been avoiding this as she hasn’t been vaccinated yet but our garden is enclosed and we have no other dogs.

It worked. From day one Fizz has trotted outside onto the grass and done what comes naturally. within 24 hours she had a regular toilet routine down and she also scratches at the back door to let us know if she needs an interim “leg-stretch”.

And grace..?

So what has any of this to do with grace then? Well when you are standing out in the cold waiting for a puppy to “go wee-wee” you do a lot of thinking. On one of these it occurred to me that the reason there are so many ways to house-train a puppy is because puppies are all different. If they were robotic we could just program their software to act how we want. They’re not robots. they are living things with minds and individuality. The reason this technique worked for us is that it suited Fizz. Other dog owners will experience more success with pee-pads and others still will swear by them (as opposed to at them). Then it occurred to me that humans are like this. We’re fickle, what suits one doesn’t necessarily suit another. It’s long been known that some students thrive in class but are hopeless in exams. Others are the opposite, being able to swot up and regurgitate the relevant facts but not apparently being able to get along in class very well. As someone once said, You are unique – just like everyone else. God knows this. He designed us that way. God seems to like diversity.

As has been often said, he didn’t make us as robots – we have free will. That’s all well and good but it has side effects, not least of which is the one that we could (and do) use our free will to reject the very idea of God altogether. It’s that dangerous game that parents play and none more so than God. The game is that you pour your heart and soul into bringing up your kids and you can at best only hope they won’t reject you and walk away. Most times kids like anyone will respond to a loving upbringing by loving their parents but that love does not always mean they will be what their parents had dreamed. And those with multiple children will know that what works with one child is almost as likely to not work with the next. People, like puppies are diverse. Imagine coming up with a single method of house-training every single puppy which not only works but suits every puppy’s individual needs and desires. It’s almost impossible, that’s why there are so many. If you want another analogy imagine coming up with a fool-proof weight loss programme which would not only work but suit the individual needs of every person who went on it. Again impossible.

Now consider the diversity between two puppies or two children with the same parents. Now project that upwards to the 6 billion people currently on the planet (never mind all the ones who are no longer on it). Imagine trying to come up with a single way to recompense for the diversity of wrong doing and – yes – sin among so many people. Yet God did. In a single act Jesus dealt with the entire range and amount of sin the human race could collectively muster – ever. And yet not one person is dealt with the same. Each person who comes to what we Christians call the “throne of grace” is forgiven completely and finds all their sin, guilt and even shame dealt with once and for ever. Yet each person will leave with a different experience. Each encounters a very personal and real Saviour who reacts and interacts with them in a way that best suits them. In short each encounters grace which sufficient.

That’s why it’s amazing.

Thought I’d start the new year with a cautionary tale.

Somebody once said “There’s no such thing as a normal day”. That is true but there are definitely abnormal days. Days that really could only happen once. At least there had better be or else the day described here could happen again. Before I go any further I want to say this is all absolutely true (except the Bon Jovi bit which I can’t prove) and occurred in mid 2008. At the time, I submitted it as an article for an internal magazine where I was then working but never got around to putting it on here.

Update 19 March 2010: Recently this page has been coming to the top of Google searches for “My child has put cat poo in their mouth”. If you’ve come here looking for what to do I’m afraid I don’t have the answer. The NHS website does say that “Animal faeces (poo) are not ‘poisonous’ but may cause infections and if you are concerned you should call NHS Direct.” Here’s the link to that page (helpfully called “poisoning”) if it helps.

If your child hasn’t been tucking into the cat litter you can read on. Oh and wouldn’t read this while eating if I were you.

Rude awakenings

It all started when my left leg decided it was time to re-introduce me to the idea of cramp. Now I’ve had my fair share of cramp and perhaps it was the fact that I was in the middle of an unusually deep sleep but I don’t recall cramp ever feeling like this! This was man-cramp. My leg felt like it had a shark attached and I went from snore to roar in under a second. I did what any normal human would do and screamed. Actually I didn’t – I was about to when I remembered my loving wife (Claire) sound asleep beside me and being a caring husband (and a complete coward) I thought it best not to wake her at 5:30 in the morning.

So I slid out of bed (the only way I could actually move at the time) and tried to get rid of the cramp by stretching my leg – which of course hurt even more. So now I wanted to scream even more. Time to leave the room and scream elsewhere. They don’t call it cramp for nothing though and my first step resulted in a half lunge and me falling towards the bed. After a clever mid-fall twist which would have made Tom Daley proud I avoided the bed and landed on the floor – right on top of the leg with cramp. So I crawled to the bathroom, stuffed a flannel in my mouth and stretched my leg. After about ten minutes the pain (and the screaming) reduced enough for me to limp back to bed where my – ever so concerned – wife was probably dreaming about Jon Bon-Jovi but was definitely not awake. Phew. The venture was a success in one aspect at least.

I went from roar to snore in under a second. This was man-cramp!

And so back to sleep for all of around 10 minutes when my son (four at the time) started shouting “help!” from his bedroom. Despite some well placed elbows, Bon-Jovi was still holding my wife’s avid attention. So up I got and hobbled into the kids’ room to find him sitting up in the top bunk. He calmly explained that he’d had a nightmare and had “forgotten” to wake up in the middle of it to go to the toilet. The bed was soaked. His sister (three) was as out of it as my wife (but hopefully not dreaming about Jon Bon-Jovi) in the lower bunk. The manager in me took over and I decided that eighties musicians would have to move aside. I, gently, woke my wife and assigned her the task of dealing with our son while I dealt with the bed. Standing on the edge of the lower bunk (with my daughter still asleep in it) I stripped the top one and cleaned up. Eventually the bedding was all piled up and Catnip (his favourite toy) was sitting atop the pile like a wee-covered Guy Fawkes. I decided I’d take them down “in the morning”. By this time my son was clean and in dry jammies and clambered back into bed. I limped back to mine. My wife was already heading back to the eighties and my cramp was dying down so it seemed some sleep was on the cards.

Enter the cat

At this point the cat realised she had not played a big enough part in my morning. She also decided – what with all the moving around – that it must be time for her breakfast. Tempting as it was to help her out of the upstairs window, I hobbled downstairs and fed her with all the grace I could muster. Believe me, she was lucky I didn’t put a funnel in her mouth and pour it down! So after all that it was back to bed and what was left of my sleep.

Believe me at this point the cat was lucky I didn’t open her mouth and pour the food down for her!

But wait! There’s more. Apparently during my cramp-induced gymnastics I managed to knock my alarm clock off the bedside and turned it off. So half an hour after I was supposed to wake up, my son appeared beside my bed and gently shook me. “Ah bless” I thought ,“He probably wants some breakfast”. He probably did, but the reason he was waking me up was to say “Daddy, Pebbles has done a poo in my room”. Pebbles if you haven’t guessed is the afore-mentioned cat. Taking in this glorious news I just knew it would be on the rug and not on the – easy to clean – laminate flooring. “Where abouts?” I asked, anxiously. “On the bottom bunk” came the reply swiftly followed by – a very dead-pan – “and it’s all squishy”. This was enough to drag my wife back from her own personal Ashes-to-Ashes and she went to rescue our daughter from the cat’s new litter tray. After she returned while I limped towards my own personal Life On Mars to clean another bed. Meanwhile Mummy went through the checking-a-child-for-cat-poo-whilst-avoiding-getting-it-on-yourself-and-anything-else procedure (patent pending).

When I arrived there were indeed some “parcels of fun” from Pebbles the cat on the end of the bed and they were indeed, squishy. Not that my daughter had noticed. Apparently she had remained completely asleep while the cat did it’s business and – even with the squishy poo on her bed – I confess I was envious. The cat must have seen my face and decided this was not the time to ask for more food and she sat quietly by the back door waiting for me to open it. If she was smart she’d stay out there all day. I know my cat. She’s not that smart.

A twist in the tale

You’d think this story would end now wouldn’t you but, like an M. Night Shyamalan film, there’s one final plot twist. As I went out to deposit Pebbles’ – er – pebbles ( now in a bag ) into the dustbin I re-discovered that the day before my Father-in-Law ( who to be fair was just trying to be helpful ) had put the kitchen bin liner and put it next to our dustbin. I had “meant” to do something about that before going to bed because, bless him, he didn’t know the reason we have dustbins with lids where I live. They are called foxes and overnight a couple of the little beggars had ripped that bin bag to shreds and spread the contents – offering like – before my front door. They were obviously looking for waste food. Ha! Waste food in our house – nice one.

So there I stood, tired, in bare feet, only one of which I could stand on, holding a bag of poo, before a sea of kitchen waste. Hey, at least the sun was shining. Right in my eyes! So I mopped up the sea, deposited the bag o’ poo and glanced at the clock. Arrghhh – 7:45 – I was supposed to leave at 7:30!

So while “this is the day that the Lord has made” would seem ironic at that moment. “We will rejoice and be glad in it” was a particular struggle. I really hope that was an abnormal day. Because if it wasn’t, there’s a risk that it could happen again and I’m not sure I could survive two days like that.

I know for a fact that my cat won’t!

P.S. My wife has asked me to point out that the bit about Bon Jovi is entirely without evidence or factual basis and is simply a pre-supposition on my part. Glad to get the legal part over but I would like to say that she was very excited when I later gave her tickets to a Bon-Jovi concert

One of the main attractions

During the summer our family visited Suffolk and spent some time doing the tourist bit. We found some great examples of things to do – particularly if you are dragging under 8s around. One shining example was the Oasis Camel Centre.

It’s a bit tricky to find as it’s buried in the heart of Suffolk farm land. That said, there’s a great map on their website which would have been handy had we bothered to prepare this trip before we went on holiday. As the name suggests the main attraction of the place are the camels which are fab. Twice a day there is a meet the camel session during which you can get right up close to one of the magnificent creatures. It being a little harder to get to and not as well known as other Suffolk animal attractions (such as Africa Live) actually works in our favour here as it’s not overly crowded. That said it’s not exactly empty either.

But it’s not just camels, there are llamas, al-pacas and rhea (see below), along with ponies, donkeys, pig and the almost ubiquitous goats, rabbits and peacocks. Add to that the very well kept play areas (including a covered bouncy castle area) and the small but clean and functional cafe and you have a really good out. The entrance prices are reasonable, staff friendly and facilities are good and most importantly the animals are clearly well looked after with plenty of room and you can see they are cared for.

For reference our party consisted of adults in their 30s, 40s and 70s as well as a four and five (sorry nearly six) year old and all of us had a good time. So if you are Suffolk and find yourself wondering what to do, I really recommend the Oasis Camel Centre.

[Show picture list]