Walking with Bebe II.

... and weather like this.

Success! And Walking with Bebe I.

The solo parenting gig was a roaring success. In fact, I think it was just the thing the kid and I needed to bond. I love his guts. It only took nine weeks.

Friday was a sleepy day for the kid, and I spent it doing I'm not sure exactly what. But when he did wake up in the late afternoon, I strapped him on and we went for an epic walk down through the park and across to the lake. The roads were quiet and as the air crisped up and we headed for home, the light over the chimneys of a block of flats in a street I've never strolled through caught my eye and inspired what I think will be the first of many Walking with Bebe iPhone pics. Regardez vous:

Mornington was a lovely stretch of eating and beach-walking and laughing uproariously at the antics of puppies, plural and baby, singular. A's mum came for lunch on Sunday and the kid put on one hellava show. He laughs! It is hilarious! Brought the house down. There were happy tears, and not just from me.

The drive from the beach to the airport was two hours of 100km freeway travel in the dark, once we got past this bollocks.

I don't fancy that sort of thing at all. Too fast and too dark to be attempting at the best of times, but terrifying on two months of sleep deprivation. Only one near miss, which of course is one too many. And crap! I still haven't bought the shittylink pass!

The Boy had a super time in Canberra, by all accounts, and received his fancy shodan certificate and passport from the main Japanese hombu, presented by Numata Sensai himself. V. impressive. Now he wants a sword. Because they're cool. Why else.

We went up to the farm on Monday afternoon, with S, to move the goats, and the autumn storybook toadstools are back. This one in the shed was as big as a dinner plate. Bigger, maybe. The patch under the trees in the house paddock is much bigger than last year, but alas, my phone ran out of juice before I managed to take a photo of their spotty domes, so this mammoth beast a little past its prime is all you get.

Goats moved, we headed home on Tuesday in time for a quick shower and then the short stroll to Red Door for dinner with the usual suspects for T's birthday. It was the perfect evening. My favourite people around a feast on a big wooden table, everyone in good spirits, the kid asleep in his pram beside us, periodically admired by the people I love. And all within walking distance of home.

The Boy went back to school today. Life with the kid resumes. I think I'll be better at it this time around. It's hard to be anything but optimistic after a holiday like that...

Going it alone.

The Boy has gone to Canberra for another gashuku and I'm a single parent for three whole days. It's been so good to have him at home for the school holidays. I'm dreading him going back, a little bit. He's the natural parent of the two of us. I'm too impatient. Too easily unsettled when the kid is unsettled. Maybe that's partly hormonal, I don't know. But when he's crying, it's The Boy who can calm him down without resorting to sticking a finger in his mouth. I tried a dummy this morning. He wouldn't take it. There goes that parenting dilemma.

It's funny, on the good days I feel like I'm living in some kind of golden dreamland of awesome. But there's a direct correlation between hours slept and sunniness of mood, and as soon as it dips below 4 or so nighttime hours, I'm a mess. I thought for a brief few days that perhaps we'd got to the magical 'sleeps through the night' stage. But immunisations on Monday and some kind of growth spurt (according to the wonder weeks graph thingy) have meant The Boy has logged a whole lot of middle-of-the-night fitball hours this week. It'll be an interesting couple of nights without him...

We're off to the beach tomorrow to stay with the boys and the puppies, and to have lunch with the kid's self-appointed third grandma. (She's convinced the boys will never have children of their own, so she's adopted mine. Which is sweet. And comes with vintage Bunnikins crockery.) In the meantime, it's nappy-washing, chocolate-eating and card-making for the lovely K's new baby.

Halfway through solo-parent day 1...

A most excellent birthday.

Best birthday ever. And there have been some good ones! Saturday was a beautiful day, and for the first time in 8 weeks, I wasn't up at 4am to see it. The Boy slept in the other room with the lad and managed to keep him quiet for eight whole hours! The kid is drinking expressed milk from a bottle like a champion, so at least while the holidays are with us, that middle of the night feed is not my problem. And actually, at last, it seems like he's beginning to not always want it. It's a miracle.

Anyway, a full night's sleep was the best birthday present I could have wanted, but he topped it off with the sweetest little card with both their hands traced on the inside, AND an awesome new ensemble from Fool. I'm a lucky lady.

The usual crew came over for lunch, with flowers and puppies and babies now and all of a sudden we're all grown up. The clucky ones took turns holding the kid and we all ate far too much chilli and cornbread and cake and chocolate, and they even did the dishes before they left. We've been through some shit together, those 10 or so people and I. Births, deaths and marriages. There's no finer friends on the planet.

Dotti and Pops met us at the park the next morning to watch some aikido. The plan was to leave the sweaty men to it and have a civilised brunch at The European, but traffic conspired against them, so we settled for the crappy cafe in the gardens, with the sweaty men and their bicycles. Pops is some kind of baby whisperer - every time he picks the kid up, he falls asleep.

Part three of the birthday extravaganza was on Monday night, courtesy of The Boy's mum. We went to Mizuzu's on her dime and she stayed home with the kid. I felt like a five-year-old as we got in the car to leave. A whole three hours on our own! Sans baby! Avec wine! S was working that night, and we gorged ourselves on Japanese delicacies without worrying about things I shouldn't be eating, or the bill. It was the perfect thing to do, and the kid didn't wake up at all while we were out.

It wasn't huge or spectacular or particularly exciting, but it was exactly what I wanted. Food and friends and a little bit of peace. I am getting old. It's pretty great.

Double rainbow.

Back to it, kids! Sleep has returned and with it my usual cheery disposition.

The Boy is a saint. He's spent the first week of the school holidays settling the kid at night, which has made a WORLD of difference to my sanity. Before, whenever I'd go to pick him up, he'd sniff out the boobs and cry until he got some. But with papa bear on the case, there ain't no milk to be had, and suddenly he's going five or six hours overnight without being fed. I'm sure it's partly because he's also eight weeks old tomorrow, so he's settling into a better pattern, but good lordy god almighty I'm glad it's so. I feel like a completely different person. A nicer one. It's much easier to love the kid when I don't resent him.

We ventured out to the farm the other night, for our first overnight trip with bebe. It was a roaring success. I felt myself unclench the minute we started climbing the hill out of Research, and by the time we got there I was beside myself with foggy autumn cheer. I love that place all the time, but I think there's something about this time of year - the hills are green, the trees gently drip, the grass is silvery with beaded rain. Everything is soft and fresh and not yet too bitterly cold. I stood on the verandah with the kid in the morning and listened to the birds and watched the mist drift through the jagged, fire-scarred mountain ridge and felt very peaceful indeed.

Yesterday was the second mothers' group meeting and that was pretty great too. Everyone was more relaxed and chatty and it turns out there are four (four!) of us in the same street. Don't know how we never saw each other waddling around over the past year, but there you have it. The kid has three pretty ladies in his posse, and we've all swapped numbers now, so there's always going to be someone two seconds away who really gets it. We're all within about 100 metres of each other too, so it may not even be entirely essential to get out of the pjs to visit.

It's my birthday tomorrow. I remember secretly not really drinking very much at the last one because we were trying to make a baby. False alarm that month, but he was here by the next one. It's been an eventful 365 days...

Things that don't suck.

So. The baby still doesn't sleep through the night. Not even close. Beast of a child demands to be fed every four hours. Five if we're lucky. My brain is melting and my will with it. I've cried more in the last seven weeks than in the last seven years. But none if that makes for very interesting blogging. And going on the 'If you can't say something nice, don't say nothing at all' principle would mean a very long period of radio silence indeed. So in order to haul myself out of this funk, and to try and get back into the blogging rhythm, I'm going to make an effort to look for things about this life that don't suck. As opposed to the many things that do. Behold:

*Friends like lovely A, who sent a text within hours of landing from Italy to see if she could come over and help. I was weeping on the couch in my pyjamas at the time, and her visit was just what I needed to pull myself together. Plus, because she house-sat for us while we were in Japan, she knew where everything was, and made tea and took out the rubbish and put the washing on without needing any instructions. And she held the crying baby while I had a shower. We even managed to get out and have some lunch.

*Getting the child to his first cultural experience (which he slept through, naturally).

*School holidays. The Boy is home for two and a bit weeks and although he still has work to do (and an aikido gashku in Canberra over Easter, ack) at least I'm not on my own.

*The mothers' group. Maybe. It didn't entirely suck the first time. The jury is still out.

*The OzWeather app on my iPhone. I freaking love that BOM radar. I love it just generally anyway, but last night I looked at it and got the nappies in off the line before the deluge. (The house is going to look like a Chinese laundry over winter, but that's not something that belongs on this list.)

*Not going to work on a morning when the train tracks look like this again, according to The Boy, who just came back from his morning coffee run.

*That the cat shat on the floorboards in the living room rather than on the v. expensive rug. (Observe my optimism! The cat shitting inside is a good thing!)

*This.

A brief window...

Six weeks down and it feels like he has been here forever. He is bigger and stronger and so much more interactive. The smiles he cracks out just kill me - his gummy little chops and chubster cheeks. I miss him when we put him to bed for the evening, and when he wakes to be fed at 3am and all I want to do is sleep, one glimpse of his pudgy little man-face and all is forgiven.

He grunts and laughs and moans in his sleep and he NEVER stops wriggling, but that ain't no surprise.

He is tiny and maddening and hilarious, and awake now...

One day blogging might become a more regular feature of life, but at the moment it's back to the world of poo...