(Yesterday he navigated himself out of the living room, around the corner and halfway down the corridor to follow The Boy into the kitchen, in about 12 seconds flat. The game has most definitely changed.)
Saturday, 26 November 2011
The sun is up, the sky is blue...
He at last went forwards on Thursday, as we sat playing on the jardin en plastique. It was Dear Prudence that did it. Playing on the iPhone. Unstoppable, he was, as the bass kicked in and the tempo charged for the finale. Wriggled and squirmed commando-style, determined to reach the other end of the grass and the source of that awesome tune.
He did it. Made a mama proud. Thank you John, Paul, George, Ringo and Steve.
(Yesterday he navigated himself out of the living room, around the corner and halfway down the corridor to follow The Boy into the kitchen, in about 12 seconds flat. The game has most definitely changed.)
(Yesterday he navigated himself out of the living room, around the corner and halfway down the corridor to follow The Boy into the kitchen, in about 12 seconds flat. The game has most definitely changed.)
Friday, 25 November 2011
Tuesday, 22 November 2011
Bite me.
Well, that was a whole lot of bullshit. After breezing through the arrivals of teeth numbers 1, 2 and 3, the last week or so was an extremely unwelcome experience in the fresh hell of TEETHING. It started with a fever and ended five days later with a baby so exhausted he fell asleep in my arms as I was feeding him, and didn't stir when I put him in his sleeping bag and his cot. I don't think I've seen him that asleep since he was about six weeks old.
We've had incessant grizzling; hourly wakeups in the night; catnapping during the day; a jump in breastfeeding that made my boobs go up a cup size; clingyness to the point of me needing to leave the house on the weekend so that I could have an hour not attached to a dribbling, whinging child; and enough drool to soak t-shirts in minutes and suddenly accelerate the kid's ability to drink water from a cup as opposed to just spitting on the rim - a skill that he had thus far been utterly disinterested in. I know I am prone to hyperbole, but I am not joking here. All of this and more.
Even baby nurofen, which we fell upon in desperation on Friday afternoon, only made him deliriously, somersaultingly happy for an hour or so before the cackling turned back to crying. He lost his voice from screaming, and there is nothing quite so heartbreakingly hilarious as the sound of the tiny squeak he so furiously forced out at 5 am on Sunday morning. When cuddling, settling, feeding and snuggling for an hour didn't stop the screeching, we all three got the hell out of the house and pounded the cigarette-butt-littered streets of St Kilda in the crisp dawn air. Nothing like black-eyed, bleary parents walking zombie-like, past punters on their way home looking much the same.
Somewhere in the mess of the weekend, we also went to Bunnings, in an effort to make the concrete paradise of our back yard a little more appealing. Eat my fake grass, Jamie Durie.
We've had incessant grizzling; hourly wakeups in the night; catnapping during the day; a jump in breastfeeding that made my boobs go up a cup size; clingyness to the point of me needing to leave the house on the weekend so that I could have an hour not attached to a dribbling, whinging child; and enough drool to soak t-shirts in minutes and suddenly accelerate the kid's ability to drink water from a cup as opposed to just spitting on the rim - a skill that he had thus far been utterly disinterested in. I know I am prone to hyperbole, but I am not joking here. All of this and more.
Even baby nurofen, which we fell upon in desperation on Friday afternoon, only made him deliriously, somersaultingly happy for an hour or so before the cackling turned back to crying. He lost his voice from screaming, and there is nothing quite so heartbreakingly hilarious as the sound of the tiny squeak he so furiously forced out at 5 am on Sunday morning. When cuddling, settling, feeding and snuggling for an hour didn't stop the screeching, we all three got the hell out of the house and pounded the cigarette-butt-littered streets of St Kilda in the crisp dawn air. Nothing like black-eyed, bleary parents walking zombie-like, past punters on their way home looking much the same.
Somewhere in the mess of the weekend, we also went to Bunnings, in an effort to make the concrete paradise of our back yard a little more appealing. Eat my fake grass, Jamie Durie.
 |
| Look at him. Happy as a lark. Don't be fooled. That's the nurofen talking. |
Monday, 21 November 2011
My cat, the hunter.
The kitten's reign of terror continues. Numerous blowflies, three cabbage moths, a cicada and the world's smallest dragonfly have met their match. You're next, grasshoppers.
Sunday, 20 November 2011
Walking with bebe...
... at 6 am on a Sunday because the kid has forgotten how to sleep.
(These lampshades are RAD, though, yes?)
Thursday, 17 November 2011
Summer in the city.
Sitting on the doorstep in the balmy dark, not going in to the kid who stirs and grizzles, listening to the cat's bells on the other side of the fence. Ting, ting, ting.
A lizard on the wire door, reminding me of this song and summers past.
A lizard on the wire door, reminding me of this song and summers past.
Experiments with consonants.
The kid may be saying 'mama'. He may also just be making sounds for the hell of it, but I'm answering him like he's talking to me because I feel like we've been in a developmental rut for a bit, and it's nice to have something new going on.
Something else new is driving to the Children's Hospital at midnight on Tuesday, shaking with the adrenaline of having a reading of 38.7 on the thermometer, five minutes after it read 38. The Boy is a saint. I didn't stir when the kid started grizzling. Resolutely pulled my dream cap further down and turned my shoulder to the wall. The Boy got up, though, and the kid was on fire. Tried to squirt baby panadol into his mouth, which resulting in choking and screaming and more screaming when The Boy sneezed as he was holding him, which is one of the kid's least favourite things. Lamps on, PJs popped loose, thinking maybe a feed will help. It settled him briefly, until we tried again with the panadol, which brought on an explosive river of cherry-flavoured milk and a little bit of dinner, for textural interest. Wow, that shit smells foul when it comes back up. The screaming resumed, intensified. What with the fever and the vomiting (again) and the maternal nurse hotline being busy, we slipped into highly efficient middle-of-the-night emergency mode, and were out of the door with wallets and phones and a bag full of clothes and nappies and toys within about three minutes.
These things always happen in the dark. Driving through the deserted city, rain slamming down, smell of vomit souring on my skin. Of course, once we arrived, the car ride had soothed the kid, the fever had lost a little heat, and he put on a happy display for the triage nurse. We changed his stinky clothes and sprawled on the couches, surrounded by limp and grizzling children and their haggared, tracksuited parents. It was 1 am, and the next patient to be seen had been waiting since 8. Forty minutes later, we read the fever fact-sheet we'd been given, and decided, as the kid played happily with the other pages, that we'd all be better off at home. More smiles for the nurses, back out into the rain, and home to bed. He woke every hour and wanted only to be fed and cuddled, so no sleep for mama that night, and not a lot for The Boy either.
He was miserable all day yesterday, and drooly, but not hot, and he slept reasonably well last night. But I am shattered. Bloodshot and weary. Not very long ago, when I was deep in a fog of blackness, I honestly thought that perhaps if the kid died in the night, that would be ok, because I could sleep and have my life back and not be so constantly needed. (How can something so ludicrous have seemed lucid to me? It absolutely did.) But in the light, with sense and love and properly balanced hormones, my goodness, the thought of being without this growing creature who calls me mama...
Something else new is driving to the Children's Hospital at midnight on Tuesday, shaking with the adrenaline of having a reading of 38.7 on the thermometer, five minutes after it read 38. The Boy is a saint. I didn't stir when the kid started grizzling. Resolutely pulled my dream cap further down and turned my shoulder to the wall. The Boy got up, though, and the kid was on fire. Tried to squirt baby panadol into his mouth, which resulting in choking and screaming and more screaming when The Boy sneezed as he was holding him, which is one of the kid's least favourite things. Lamps on, PJs popped loose, thinking maybe a feed will help. It settled him briefly, until we tried again with the panadol, which brought on an explosive river of cherry-flavoured milk and a little bit of dinner, for textural interest. Wow, that shit smells foul when it comes back up. The screaming resumed, intensified. What with the fever and the vomiting (again) and the maternal nurse hotline being busy, we slipped into highly efficient middle-of-the-night emergency mode, and were out of the door with wallets and phones and a bag full of clothes and nappies and toys within about three minutes.
These things always happen in the dark. Driving through the deserted city, rain slamming down, smell of vomit souring on my skin. Of course, once we arrived, the car ride had soothed the kid, the fever had lost a little heat, and he put on a happy display for the triage nurse. We changed his stinky clothes and sprawled on the couches, surrounded by limp and grizzling children and their haggared, tracksuited parents. It was 1 am, and the next patient to be seen had been waiting since 8. Forty minutes later, we read the fever fact-sheet we'd been given, and decided, as the kid played happily with the other pages, that we'd all be better off at home. More smiles for the nurses, back out into the rain, and home to bed. He woke every hour and wanted only to be fed and cuddled, so no sleep for mama that night, and not a lot for The Boy either.
He was miserable all day yesterday, and drooly, but not hot, and he slept reasonably well last night. But I am shattered. Bloodshot and weary. Not very long ago, when I was deep in a fog of blackness, I honestly thought that perhaps if the kid died in the night, that would be ok, because I could sleep and have my life back and not be so constantly needed. (How can something so ludicrous have seemed lucid to me? It absolutely did.) But in the light, with sense and love and properly balanced hormones, my goodness, the thought of being without this growing creature who calls me mama...
Monday, 7 November 2011
Pants.
I rather like the English way of using 'pants' to mean underwear.
And then also to mean 'no good'. These pants for mah bebe are indeed pants.
Note the wayward seam. (And the Ikea ironing board that has been wrapped in plastic behind a bookshelf since we moved into this house nearly four years ago. We are not Ironers. You can tell, because I scorched the board within 30 seconds of setting up the iron.)
Waistband ahoy. Looks pretty good here. Cos you can't see the part where the folded up bit didn't catch in the seam and is flapping about inside the pants now. All technical terms.
Extremely large pants! With extremely dodgy hems. Did I ever mention that my mum worked in the rag trade? She made all our clothes when we were kids. She swore a lot less than me. I had to ring her to ask which way to lay the fabric out. And then to find out what I was doing wrong when trying to thread the machine. I still don't know the answer to that. The Boy had to do it for me. I swear, it smells my fear. But anyway. Pants. They aren't navy blue, or cargo pants, or ridiculous baby jeans and they did not cost me $30. And actually, they weren't that tricky. These are all good things. Pants! I may yet make some more. Muchas gracias, Pip.
Note the wayward seam. (And the Ikea ironing board that has been wrapped in plastic behind a bookshelf since we moved into this house nearly four years ago. We are not Ironers. You can tell, because I scorched the board within 30 seconds of setting up the iron.)
Waistband ahoy. Looks pretty good here. Cos you can't see the part where the folded up bit didn't catch in the seam and is flapping about inside the pants now. All technical terms.
Extremely large pants! With extremely dodgy hems. Did I ever mention that my mum worked in the rag trade? She made all our clothes when we were kids. She swore a lot less than me. I had to ring her to ask which way to lay the fabric out. And then to find out what I was doing wrong when trying to thread the machine. I still don't know the answer to that. The Boy had to do it for me. I swear, it smells my fear. But anyway. Pants. They aren't navy blue, or cargo pants, or ridiculous baby jeans and they did not cost me $30. And actually, they weren't that tricky. These are all good things. Pants! I may yet make some more. Muchas gracias, Pip.
Friday, 4 November 2011
Thursday, 3 November 2011
MamaBake.
There are three other mothers in our group that are My People, you know.
We hang out outside of the whole group, and email each other, and have a generally similar outlook on life. We likes to cook and have a sneaky glass of wine and leave our children to their own devices. (Not really. But it is much easier for them to entertain each other when there are four of them.) And so we do. We MamaBake.
It's all vego, and all freezer friendly. So far we've made a Thai pumpkin curry, lentil 'shepherd's' pie, mushroom bolognese, cannelloni, pizza dough and ravioli. None of which I have photos of. The pasta we made with the help of Vincenzo, authentic Italian nonno. He was a whizz with the pasta machine!
It's the most fun I've had in a long time, these last few Fridays. The babies all feed and play and sleep, we chop and stir and drink and laugh and wear silly aprons and then we box it all up in plastic tubs and go home with a freezer full of food each. Genius.
It's the most fun I've had in a long time, these last few Fridays. The babies all feed and play and sleep, we chop and stir and drink and laugh and wear silly aprons and then we box it all up in plastic tubs and go home with a freezer full of food each. Genius.
 |
| Photo by one o' the mamas. Dodgy photoshopping by moi. |
Wednesday, 2 November 2011
The list. And some other stuff.
Time for another update.
1. Go swimming with the kid.
3. Re-stock the wood pile at the farm.
4.RUN at least once a week. Ahem. Not such a great few weeks for this. But I'm back on the horse. Went yesterday, and I'm fucking unfit, but the pelvic floor issue is one hundred thousand times better. Which is huge relief. I think the goal now is to run the Great Ocean Road 14km event in May, and to be able to start training in earnest by the kid's birthday in Feb. You heard it here first.
5. Eat a lobster roll at Golden Fields.
6. Finish the Japan book. Hit a bit of a snag with this one... I decided halfway through that I thought a bigger sized book would be better, but the pics I had laid out as full-page images are too low-res to be used in the larger format. So. I guess it'll be a tiny brick of a memoir. And now that the first of the month has rolled around again and our internet is chugging along at a speed that doesn't make me want to set fire to the modem, I'll get back into it.
7. Family photos. Yay, there are some excellent shots. We went and spent a bazillion dollars on canvas enlargements, which 24 hours later I tried to downgrade to prints, but too late. What we are going to do with them I have no clue. We are not canvas enlargements people. Or at least we didn't used to be. But the parentals all came and ordered a couple of nice prints and I'm really glad we have some good ones of the three of us now. Still a couple of weeks until they arrive.
8. Plant some vegies (tomatoes,lettuce, carrots). The lettuces went great guns, and then the snails went great guns eating them. And the basil. Boo. Cup Day is supposed to be tomato planting time, and I'm on the hunt for grow bags to get them started. Carrots can bite me. But the mint is thriving!
9.Have people over for brunch. Success. And as usual, way too much food. But I was happy enough eating leftover bircher muesli and croissants and challah for a while afterwards. The kid was well-behaved, the pregnant lady scored some hand-me-downs, the engaged peeps got celebratory champagne and the boys left their dogs at home. A good time had by all.
10. Eat some sourdough from Firebrand.
11. Date night x 1, 2, 3.
12. Frame the kid's birth certificate.
13. Have a massage.
14. Take the kid to the beach.
15. Be able to run around the Tan by NYE!
Other things...
We scored big at the Oxfam Eltham second-hand bookstall. Almost every weekend as we head out to the farm, we peer down the driveway of the hall and wonder if it's book weekend. We'd had a big morning and were hoping the kid would fall asleep on the drive, but there was no turning back once we realised it was on. It has never disappointed, and this year was no different. $1 each! I think we found more there in about 15 minutes than we did the whole day in a town full of booksellers at Clunes. Excellent.
The kid and I are heading into the city this morning to buy some fabric so I can make him some pants. He has outgrown all his, and I can't find any that I like anywhere. Too navy or too pastel or too... crap. And I can't justify another Love it love it love it spree just yet. So sewing it is. We're buying wool too, for another little hat, like this one I just sent off to baby A, to keep his wee northern hemisphere head warm...
I think I can just about knit those hats in my sleep now. Babies D, L, J, M, A and of course the kid have one, and there's a couple more on the way. Jeez, I know a lot of babies!
Speaking of... Mine wakes. He still isn't sleeping in the night consistently. But he seems to be logging some serious morning nap time to make up for it, so at least that's something. Back into the fray.
4.
5. Eat a lobster roll at Golden Fields.
6. Finish the Japan book. Hit a bit of a snag with this one... I decided halfway through that I thought a bigger sized book would be better, but the pics I had laid out as full-page images are too low-res to be used in the larger format. So. I guess it'll be a tiny brick of a memoir. And now that the first of the month has rolled around again and our internet is chugging along at a speed that doesn't make me want to set fire to the modem, I'll get back into it.
8. Plant some vegies (tomatoes,
9.
11.
12. Frame the kid's birth certificate.
13. Have a massage.
14. Take the kid to the beach.
15. Be able to run around the Tan by NYE!
Other things...
We scored big at the Oxfam Eltham second-hand bookstall. Almost every weekend as we head out to the farm, we peer down the driveway of the hall and wonder if it's book weekend. We'd had a big morning and were hoping the kid would fall asleep on the drive, but there was no turning back once we realised it was on. It has never disappointed, and this year was no different. $1 each! I think we found more there in about 15 minutes than we did the whole day in a town full of booksellers at Clunes. Excellent.
The kid and I are heading into the city this morning to buy some fabric so I can make him some pants. He has outgrown all his, and I can't find any that I like anywhere. Too navy or too pastel or too... crap. And I can't justify another Love it love it love it spree just yet. So sewing it is. We're buying wool too, for another little hat, like this one I just sent off to baby A, to keep his wee northern hemisphere head warm...
I think I can just about knit those hats in my sleep now. Babies D, L, J, M, A and of course the kid have one, and there's a couple more on the way. Jeez, I know a lot of babies!
Speaking of... Mine wakes. He still isn't sleeping in the night consistently. But he seems to be logging some serious morning nap time to make up for it, so at least that's something. Back into the fray.
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