mogantosh

Family Band and Screen-Free Weekends

2012-01-27T21:28:00.005+11:00

We've been instituting a screen-free policy on the weekends. We lock the laptops in the shed and ban TV. During the week, by the time all small people have been fed, watered and squiggled down to sleep, hopefully an after-dinner parlour game played and won, and the washing-up vanquished (even if all the other housework is carried-over until the morning) we're left with just a small window for technology.

At the minute we've been filling that window with a nightly dose of Game Of Thrones (totally addictive, highly nerdy.) So blogging and other writing is taking a back seat. But in short, we've been arting and crafting, cracking down on some serious naughty attacks, feeding the baby some real food (such good fun) and preparing Ivy for school.

School!

We've also been introducing baby George to the Family Band. She shows a real interest in the music, and so we think she's caught the gene for loving a nobby, musical good time. Huzzah George! By the time you're five you might even be rocking some Mick Jagger/River-dancing moves like your big sister.

Happy weekending, folks.

Postcard From My Liver

2012-01-23T20:24:00.012+11:00

A note: when you are putting a disco wig on the baby it is time to go home from the party. Perhaps, if I may, a little past time.

Folks, let's file today under Experiments I Have Done So you Don't Have To. Perhaps you have been wondering lately whether you should throw back a few wines for the first time in about a year and then spend the following day with three small children? I know it feels like a fun plan. But it is really not.

Ivy chose this morning to badger my shaking, toxic fingers into teaching her how to make houses of cards. Yep. They all fell down.

But it was Teddy who took his naughty pills. He was happy for a while playing Babies,

and practicing his writing, pen clutched like a fat spear,

but mainly, he seemed to spend his day engaged in low-grade, domestic warfare. He weed on the floor three times. Copiously, freely. 'Why? Why are you doing this Ted?' I said. 'Because I am!' he replied with a little happy dance. Twice we caught him carefully dribbling on the furniture. When scolded he insisted 'I'm not spitting! Iss a spoo! Iss spoo Mum!' and when sent in disgrace to his room, wailed 'But iss a spooooooo' all the way down the hall.

Why he thinks that methodical, concentrated vomiting on the furniture is not naughty is a question for another time and perhaps a professional psychologist.

George has been a bit grumpy. But mostly perfect in every way as usual except for the part where she is a small baby who requires feeding and can't walk to the toilet or make Mum a cup of tea to ease her troubles. Today is one of those days where I long to be single. Oh, for Eggs Benedict at a cafe with two strong lattes and the whole Herald and a free afternoon in which to catch a movie or just go back to bed...

Still. Game of Thrones, Episode 1, on the couch tonight with the K-Dog. We have a date in ten minutes and I am very excited. It may just turn my whole day around.

Some Stern Bedtime Parenting and An Unfortunate Decomposing Lizard

2012-01-20T14:55:00.006+11:00

Ivy has been upping the ante on bedtime shenanigans lately. The last three nights she has found reason after reason to emerge from her room and beg for time off her sleeping sentence. There's been a lot of 'I'm hot', some 'I'm hungry' and one heartfelt 'you need to understand, I'm just not up for it.'

Two nights she has pulled 'My eardrum hurts.' Now, Ivy is a seasoned theatrical actress. It's not her first time around the boards. She's been honing her craft since her early pre-verbal head-banging performances. By age five, she has developed a subtle style. Both Keith and I have fallen for the sickness at dinner-time ploy (and once memorably, refused to be fooled. 'Nope!' I insisted one night. 'Your tummy does not hurt! You will sit there until you finish your vegetables!' Sit there she did. Until she vomited with the beginnings of a gastro bug.)

You cannot sneakily pass a quick hand over Ivy's forehead to check for fever. She clocks it. And she knows, then, that she has found a chink in your armour. I went along with possible-ear-infection for a while but I knew Ivy was acting when she forgot which ear was hurting. 'Wasn't it the other ear before?' I asked as she held a cold washer to her face. 'It's....moving!' she said quickly. 'I think it's moving around.'

Teddy had been quietly watching this medical drama unfold. 'My regg!' he suddenly wailed. 'My regg is hurting!' Ivy looked at him with horror and then back at me. 'That's not real!' she shouted. 'It's not even real!' Ah yes, I thought. The day has come for the student to betray the teacher.

'My regg!' Teddy moaned, waving both legs in the air.

'That's it from both of you,' I said. 'No more banana work. Go to sleep.'

Last night, Ivy didn't go near the ears. Instead, she complained about the smell in her room. I went in to check. 'Oh, it's fine', I told her. But it did actually stink. 'Go to sleep.'

I went out to ask Keith if he'd noticed a smell in the kids room.

'What does it smell like?' he asked. I thought about it. 'Sort of like a cross between Dencorub and shit,' I said. 'Well, I did put Dencorub on Ivy's foot earlier...' he said. 'So it's just shit then,' we agreed. And we laughed. Like the evil parents we are.

The crying continued. 'It really stinks!' Ivy sobbed. ' I can't sleep in this smell!' Both Keith and I went in and turned the light on. We inspected the room but there was no obvious stains. We questioned Teddy but he denied poo crime.

'I think it's my foot,' she whimpered. Keith smelt her feet. 'Well, Ivy,' he said - always the meticulous scientist - 'you seem to have a small amount of foot odour but that's not the big stink.' I laughed. I couldn't help it. Poor Ivy was infuriated. Eventually she went off to sleep. This morning Keith found a rotting lizard in a bucket outside her bedroom window.

Ms McIntosh, this is your fifteen year call. Ms McIntosh, the Oscars stage in fifteen years.

So Much To Love.

2012-01-19T21:47:00.001+11:00

a. The goofy smile

b. The giraffe she loves so much

c. The vintage frock with collar straight out of an episode of 'George And Mildred'

They call Him 'Goggles'.

2012-01-18T20:54:00.001+11:00

We're halfway through 5 days of intensive swimming school. This photo cracks me up. Teddy looks like a poolside gangster. 'Ey oop,' he's saying. 'This me gal. Darnt go takin er noodle, orright. Or I'll clock ya.'

Home Alone

2012-01-15T21:27:00.005+11:00

George is fast asleep and I'm waiting for the rest of my peeps to return from a night away in Sydney. It was my father-in-law's birthday party and I was very torn between going up to celebrate or taking the chance to rest at home. I'm glad I stayed here in the end. My thyroid is overactive again and I've really been feeling strange - anxious and tired and somehow at a distance from myself. I think visiting with lots of the rels - as much as I love them - would have taken energy than I have in the tank this week.

It was sweet having a full day to spend with George though. Reminded me of those times when Keith was travelling to Canberra and I spent a lot of time alone with baby Ivy. Right when I started this blog, actually.

Five years ago.

Holy crap.

Alive At The End Of The Day

2012-01-09T20:06:00.002+11:00

This post was first published in Practical Parenting Magazine, December 2011. It was written after George was born, but before her accident, and before my thyroid disruption was diagnosed. It's funny -odd for me to reread this, a few months on. Seasons in parenthood are changing so fast for me now. My last thyroid blood tests show it's overactive again, which explains why I've been feeling weird and anxious. I have to re-test it in two weeks and then talk about options if it is still out of whack.

My mother-in-law came to visit me shortly after I gave birth to my third child. I sat in the middle of a towering pile of laundry – sleep-deprived, vomit-stained and overwhelmed. ‘Don’t worry, Rach’, my saintly MIL told me. ‘If you get to the end of the day and the children are all still alive, you’re doing your job.’ It was excellent advice. But I wasn’t prepared for how literally I would need to take it.

Our new daughter – let’s call her Pudding - is adorably, kissably perfect. The whole family agrees. But her three year old brother, T-Bone, loves her a little too much. In fact, it’s a little like having a Labrador puppy as a part-time nanny, and he’s in danger of killing her with the force of his affections.

‘My Pudding, my darling Pudding, my little baby Pudding’ he croons, while patting her with a technique better suited to tenderising a schnitzel. If she cries, he races to her bedside. ‘Don’t rurry Pudding! Don’t rurry!’ he shouts an inch from her face. He likes to replace her dummy, but his method is to grip the back of her head with one hand and jam the dummy into her mouth with the other, whether her lips are open or closed. Four-year-old Peanut, on the other hand, ‘helps’ by perching at the end of the bassinette and telling the baby at length about her jewellery. (I think of it as The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills method of baby-care.)

Mothering three kids under five has given me moments of absolutely transcendent happiness, but I admit at time I have gone a little nutty. Military discipline has become necessary. I’m not a huge shouter generally but yesterday I was driven to bellow at the children: 'You are MASSIVELY busted!’ The details of their naughtiness elude me but it likely involved property crime (Peanut took the good spoon) or actual bodily harm (T-Bone kicked me in the ears) followed by theatrical, high-pitched screaming. They both got sent to separate Time Outs before being recalled for a short lecture about behaviour in my Sergeant Mother’s tone. They both gazed at me calmly. 'Do you understand me T-Bone?' I concluded. 'Well, Mummy,’ he said. 'Did you know I has this penis?'

Another recent evening I found myself simultaneously trying to comfort a crying Pudding, coach toilet-training T-Bone through a difficult potty episode, ignore a Peanut tantrum and fix a recalcitrant Peppa Pig DVD. Inside my head the howls were deafening. 'Is you doing your best, Mum?’ asked T-Bone. Yes, I replied hopelessly. 'Well, is not very good', he said.

Today I left both kids constructing puzzles in the lounge room while I fed Pudding in my quiet bedroom and watched My Great Big Gypsy Wedding on YouTube. I thought everything was going really well until I emerged to find both children paused in a guilty tableau. Peanut had climbed a chair to turn the ceiling fan on High, and T-Bone was standing on a table trying to poke a broomstick into it.

Pudding is six weeks old tomorrow. In time, I might set my parenting ambitions a little higher, but for today, still alive at bedtime is good enough for me. And if you’ve managed that today, my readers, I’m proud of you too.

e.e cummings: revealed

2012-01-06T22:36:00.005+11:00

e.e cummings

was not

i propose

a preeminent twentieth century poet

with an unmistakable

unconventional

free verse

style

but rather

a breastfeeding mother

typing with one hand

in the middle of the night.

The Edge of The Pacific

2012-01-06T20:28:00.005+11:00

So it's not the steamiest of summers. But nonetheless we are blessed to live in a little beach town. Every time we get down to the water, I watch my kids invent games, absorbed in the infinite creative universe a huge expanse of water and sand can inspire. Children are never bored at the beach.

B @ At Home

2012-01-04T19:27:00.003+11:00

The B @ Home website contacted me about being one of their 'Best Of The Web' bloggers. They said they were impressed by my colour-blocked bookshelves. Alas, the shelves don't reflect my everyday lifestyle quite as well as the posts My Overflowing Recycling Bin and Where's That Poo Smell Coming From?

Still, I said yes and here I am along with a couple of interesting blogs you might like to check out -I thought that Sarah Learns and Things For Boys both had a lovely vibe about them.

Hope 2012 is marvellous so far. Here, the kids are well, George is flipping herself over like a fish and the K-Dog is still on holidays. Today he reported that he has finished the outside jobs and was now available for any general donkey-work I wanted to direct him towards. His actual words: 'I serve at the pleasure of the President.'

What a man.

Post-Humbug.

2011-12-22T13:54:00.003+11:00

Feeling very, very post-festive around here. Is it just the season? My mood? The feeding of a wee fat babelet every three hours making a real 'rest' difficult?

I think I'm going to check my thyroid levels. My fatigue and stressometer is higher than it should be I think.

Still, Nanna is enjoying her new house by the beach even though her smallest grandbaby looks like she's hatching a sinister plot.

Summer is slow in arriving but a cloudy eve doesn't stop one enjoying a sausage sambo down at the beach.

Georgie's first neurosurgery follow-up was very positive (although she's been back at the hospital TWICE since with a tick in her eyelid and a subsequent infection. ) Enough with the drama George! You're the third child and you need attention. We get it.

Ivy and Ted grab the sunshine wherever they can get it; Ivy fully, unnecessarily kitted out and Teddy naked as a bird.

And me and my little ones watched some belly dancing down at the Christmas markets. A moment of quiet in the maelstrom.

At the tail end of three family Christmases and all the lead-up that comes with, we're all a little befrazzled. The tent in Ivy and Ted's room captures the mood around here. I might just crawl in for a little quiet time myself.

Sisterly Love

2011-12-19T20:56:00.007+11:00

Incoming...

Incoming...

Contact!

Ivy and Ted have been playing a game they call Fetch It lately, where he pretends to be her dog. I encourage this game because she is kinder to him as his owner than as his sister.

Overheard from outside their bedroom door tonight:

Ted: And then I will be eight and I will be a girl.
Ivy: (long-suffering tone) No, Ted, I've told you, you will always be a man.
Ted: (long pause) And then I will be fourteen and I will be a girl.
Ivy: No, Teddy. (Long pause). Well, you can pretend to be a girl.

She's in his corner.

Life and That.

2011-12-10T21:21:00.015+11:00

Do you still think of yourself as a blogger when you are too busy to blog? I compose my thoughts in the shower. I take pics of moments as they catch my attention, and I think I might write them up.

But then somebody needs a cuddle or a new nappy or an arrowroot biscuit with butter on it, and another hour has passed. Suddenly, the end of the day appears, we finally get everybody off to bed and vanquish the washing-up, and there is a brief period in which Keith and I can do grown up stuff. Sometimes we hang out on the couch with duelling laptops, and I manage to post. But often the bath is calling a siren song and I need to soak my sore bones. And then it's bedtime again.

So much is happening, and I itch to record it here; preserving some moments, releasing some tension, revealing myself to myself through words. Writing my life.

Alas, I'm a little too busy living it right now. I think this blog will be a little neglected for the next while as I juggle all these balls.

But right now, it's Saturday night. Keith is off at a rare party in the city, the kids are asleep and George, too, is down for a while. It's the end of a jam-packed few days of baking and craft and Christmas prep while Keith has been in Canberra working. Time for this Mama to relax-ay-voo, go through a few photos, and and then kick back with a cup of tea and some Real Housewives. Party time!

Here's a random selection of what's been happening lately:

Ivy rocking one of her party outfits. I think this hydrangea headband is beautiful.

She's really into taking pics with my phone. Here she snaps me and little Gigi.

There's been lots of craft. Mainly about flowers. Here, some butterfly flower action.

Some Pippi Longstocking inspired floor-scrubbing sponge-skates.

And lots of toe-counting needed to fill out one of Dad's homework sheets.

Ted, here, captured in a rare pensive moment with his baby sister. (Currently, he is more like a newborn baby giraffe, all super-powered, uncontrolled limbs. At three, he is equal parts heart-melting and crazy-making. As in: 'Mama, I am growing every day like a flower, you know,' followed by 'Mama, I did get three fingers in my poo nappy!' ) George, meanwhile, is travelling really well, doing everything she should be and bringing us enormous happiness with her great goofy smiles. Her first follow up appointment with the neurosurgeons is this week.

Ivy really loves these comedy glasses. I don't know where she gets her nobby sense of humour.

Here she captures Ted in them too.

This week, a fabulous Xmas Mamabake with Jen and Lizzie making lovely little bits and pieces to be boxed up as teacher gifts.

The T-Bone hardly ever takes this hat off, but usually he teams it with nudity. Less is more.

Late at night, feeding, I visit all my favourite blogs often, but one-handed, I find it difficult to comment. I'm feeling very much like a lurker, but I have run out of the time to commit, although I am thinking of many of you struggling with stress and illness. I send you all my love and best wishes for joy and happiness and hydrangea headbands this Christmas.

...and the baby wakes

...and so it goes.

In Which Ted Is a Comedian and Ivy a Disgruntled 80's Tennis Champion.

2011-11-30T21:30:00.011+11:00

Yesterday was a good day. I set up the painting stuff outside in the sunshine while the baby slept. It started off like this.

But canvases, as usual, were quickly abandoned. I don't know why I bother trying to constrain these freewheeling hippies.

I called time when they began to advance upon me (Teddy with a particularly evil smile. )

And they barreled inside to spend an hour in a party bath shooting each other with a water pistol.

Today was more stressful. Ted embarked on a whinging festival, we ran lots of errands and Ivy kept erupting into random bursts of anger like a tiny McEnroe. Teddy was working on a new comedy bit where he took Ivy's most precious objects, one by one, and asked 'Is this rubbish?' as he ran cackling to the bin. We did not find this as funny as he did.

At Ivy's worst point, she slammed a door so hard it came off its tracks. I shouted 'Go to your room!' to which she shrieked 'Don't you scream at me!' and so I screamed ' Well, don't you scream at me!'

Parenting low.

But this five-year-old. She kills me. Tonight when I put her to bed, I leaned in for her goodnight cuddle. She turned her back, scrabbled under her pillow for a while and then turned to me wearing her comedy nerd glasses.

Even Gigi thought that one was pretty funny.

Colour Blocking The Bookshelves.

2011-11-28T21:48:00.003+11:00

In the midst of my current spring-cleaning psychosis I made the rash decision to colour block our bookshelves. It caused me immense psychic pain over the weekend, but the outcome brings happiness to my soul. So when I look at the laundry pile and think 'Arghhh!' I can turn to my soothing, beautiful bookshelves and think 'Ahhhh.' Look away. Look away. It's the only way to true housework/happiness balance.

The bookshelves themselves have been a labour of love from Keith, growing since 2009. Bit like this belly of mine.

Grateful for Nanna

2011-11-25T22:10:00.002+11:00

Life continues to spiral in a happy-wards direction, with the most exciting news that my Mum and Dad have sold their house in Sydney and moved down the coast to my little town.

It is beyond exciting for all of us. Pop wants to learn to surf and Nanna has all sorts of new adventures in mind. The kids are thrilled. Big smiles all round.

This morning I forgot Teddy's lunch. (Man, he wailed like I had cut his leg off.) Chatting to Mum on the phone at home, just like I do most days, I told her I was about to bundle George back into the car in the rain to drop his lunch-box off. 'Oh, shall I drop it off on my way through?' said Mum.

My brain did a double-take. I'm always telling Mum on the phone about my domestic mini-dramas, but it ends when I hang up and sort them out alone. But suddenly...my Mum lives in my neighborhood.

My Mum lives in my neighborhood!

Happy weekends, all. More happy grateful over here.

Happy Days

2011-11-23T21:19:00.007+11:00

I've been meaning to update this blog every day, but I feel like I rarely get two free hands at once, what with all these little people at my heels.

We are doing really well here in our little patch of sunlight. George is in fine form. We're trying to give her lots of help with baby school right now, to encourage her to meet her milestones. (I'm sure Keith and I will finally feel like everything is OK once she has her double degree in aeronautical engineering and interpretive dance. )

So tummy time it is, like it or not. (She doesn't like it.)

For the rest of us, life is grand. We've been cracking out some tunes with the Family Band, and even harvesting a few veges, and enjoying our days. Keith is working and soccering and wall-building, and I am deep in a spell of spring cleaning/clutter vanquishing madness. Madness! I am so keen to get rid of stuff and simplify our space that I should probably start head-counting the children at the end of the day. Maybe it's related somehow to the anxiety I feel about Georges accident, and trying to take control where I can. Regardless of psychology, it is so deeply satisfying to haul armloads of unwanted stuff to the op-shop. It's one of our favourite outings, me and my little gang. (Although we did recently overhear Ivy threaten Teddy 'If you don't stop that I'm going to drop all of your speciallest things to Vinnies!' so perhaps I've gone a little too far.)

Here's the tiny despot this week, in her best pearls and purple Saltwaters, taking a little break in the Salvation Army book aisles and clutching a pristine kids baking set, find of the day.

Ivy is so much fun these days. Currently she's into cracking gags with her Whoopee Cushion. Her favourite is to honk it loudly and then roll her eyes and say 'Do you think you could lighten up on the farts, Mummy?' Last night she set it all up under a towel at the dining room table and then asked me 'May I present to you your chair?' Five is a great age and Ivy is a word nerd like me. Yesterday she got out her sewing kit and asked if I needed her 'thumbkin', and when we are belting 'Perfect' by Fairground Attraction, one of our family band numbers, Ivy insists that the second line runs 'It's got to bee e e e e... werfect.' (Also she has fully mastered the finger-wagging expressive dance move, which fits almost any tune.)

I love it.

We are preparing for school next year but I find myself thinking more and more about home-schooling. We're considering how it might work. Meanwhile, Ivy loves to practice school stuff - and wear her uniform - and we all feel lucky that Keith working from home means that we get to have lunch together every day.

Ivy is very excited about going to school and if she really understood what Mummy had in mind with the homeschooling notions she would smack Mummy in the nose.

Meanwhile Teddy Bones is becoming clumsier by the day. A few days ago he actually managed to twist his legs so that he fell over while he was lying on the floor. It is truly a gift of some kind. This rambunctious, hilarious, stammering comedian refuses to wear pants.

Oh Ted.

Just thinking about him makes me laugh.

As for my sweet, smallest possum, here she perches today on the bump destined to be her buddy. The bump belongs to my beautiful friend Jen, who I count as one of my many, many blessings.

In short, we is good, and hope you is too.

Three Months

2011-11-18T21:08:00.002+11:00

Just the single giant dimple. She gonna be cheeky this one.

The George Report

2011-11-16T14:12:00.009+11:00

Wonderful women of the blogosphere, thanks for your kind and supportive messages. This is Georgie just this morning, in the big bed with her brother and sister. She is recovering really well, despite the fact that in this picture she looks a little like a London gangster I once knew called Billy Braincell.

She is behaving as well as we could hope. No vomiting, excessive dopiness or scary business. We are treating her at home with lots and lots of kisses.

She just smiles and squeaks and demands more milk to build up those chubby thighs. I can't quite catch her lopsided grin on film, but trust me, it could melt ice caps. My heightened adrenaline has subsided a little, and my heart doesn't jump into my mouth every time I look at her and remember what happened.

Now we just wait to have our follow-up appointments with the neurosurgeon and the Brain Injury Unit, which start in a few weeks. Other than that, life goes on as normal, apart from some extra-vigilant protection of Georgie's poor sweet little head. There is no predicting the future, of course, but babies are resilient, she seems to be doing wonderfully and we feel very optimistic.

Thanks again for your kind words.

Sweet Baby George.

2011-11-13T21:12:00.004+11:00

As I write, baby Georgette snuffles softly in her sleep, tucked into her Dad's lap. We are heading into a new week, shocked into something of a 'new normal' in the family, a shift in plans and scheduling and lifestyle after a scary accident this week.

A supermarket shopping trolley tipped over and deposited George on the concrete last Wednesday. We ended up at the Children's Hospital, where they did a CT scan and found that our tiny baby had fractured her skull and bruised her brain.

We are home now, and keeping George very close to us these last few days, very close and very quiet. She needs calm, darkened, peaceful cuddles while she recovers from her injury, and after that we will be under the care of the Brain Injuries Unit at the Children's Hospital, who will monitor her development for some time.

She is doing very well though; behaving just as she should. Her chances of making a full recovery are great. Me, I am a little shaken, and gripped with emotion every time I see that big lopsided dimple, those hugely fat legs, that goofy expression. I can't stop rubbing my face against her delicate, fragile little head. And we have cancelled all bunga-bunga parties at the Mogantosh Ranch for the near future.

Studio Bambini

2011-11-04T10:17:00.004+11:00

Thanks all for the supportive commentary through that recent battle with Plague. We are all feeling so much better. (Although this morning Ted did ask me how old I was, and when I said 'Guess', he offered 'A thousand?')

I tried to capture a photo of all three kids yesterday. It is impossible to get one shot where one of them does not look odd, except for George, who maintained a deranged, unblinking expression almost the entire time.

Check it.

Teddy is gormless. Preparing for a future of asking the magistrate 'Who's paying for my bus ticket today?'

Ted and Ivy both smiling. But why shut the baby down?

Teddy's 'photo face' is not as appealing as he thinks it is.

Here Ivy looks haughty and Ted looks constipated.

And here, only George would open her eyes.

Photos with three kids. Any tips?

An important note - the world map cushion the kids are sitting on is made by the brilliant Cath from Chunky Chooky. It was Ivy's 5th birthday present, an object of absolute beauty. You can buy it here.

Black Death in Three Acts

2011-10-31T15:57:00.015+11:00

This last week or two we have been trapped in some kind of perfect medical storm. Absolute craziness has gone down. The idea of relaying all the details gives me a nervous twitch, so I'll just give you a few vignettes that paint something of a general picture.

When Ivy Channeled Linda Blair

Ivy's croup settled this week into a standard-issue miserable feverish snot-festival. She passed the virus onto Keith whose body morphed it into an evil, scary, proper influenza complete with shivering and raging temps and then, by Thursday, a full overnight of vomiting and nausea. Next morning Keith was a shambles, I was exhausted and Ivy was looking shabby. Poor Ted was full of three-year-old beans and climbing the walls. Nobody had the energy to play with him.

Keith staggered out to lie on the deck in the thin sunshine, while I fed the baby in the bedroom. 'Muuuuuum, ' Ivy moaned, 'I neeeeeeeeed youuuuu.' 'Just five minutes, ' I begged. 'I'm feeding George.'

Suddenly there was a strange, loud barking yawp. I knew it was Ivy and was up out of my chair and down the hall before I could think. (I dread to imagine what happened to my nipple.) Poor Ted got under my feet in the hallway and I sent him flying. In the lounge I found Ivy throwing up. The urge must have come on her suddenly and violently, because she was running in freaked-out circles around the room, spewing in a centrifugal arc.

I thrust the baby at Keith and tended to the vomitron. Teddy was weeping bitterly and we were running late. I had to dress Ted, pack him up for day-care, clean up the crime scene and set up my two invalids to look after themselves while I made it to our doctors appointment.

I had not yet had coffee, washed my face, cleaned my teeth. Repeat. Not. Coffee.

(Ivy and Keith display their sick-bed princess craft. Ivy has gone for after-5 glamour while Keith's frock speaks of Mary Tyler-Moore-ish 1963 gal-about-town whimsy.)

When I Wanted To Kick My GP Up The Cranny

Ivy's allergy test results were in. I explained to my GP that Ivy wasn't with me to pick them up because she was home with the Black Death. When I asked the doctor about what point I should worry about flu, she had a sort of freak-out about being asked to diagnose at a distance. I said I understood, but that Ivy had been to emergency twice that week, had a giant tick removed, suffered a series of hives and swellings and was now chucking her guts up. The doctor gazed at me stony-faced. But she's still your patient, I thought confusedly. This is her appointment. She's not here because she's too sick. We sat in silence for a little while. 'Well, she's got an egg and milk allergy', she told me off-handedly, and then, as a final salvo: 'And you look like you're going to cry.'

When I Failed To Get A Urine Sample

Saturday morning, Georgette spiked a temperature of 38.6. I rang a health-line to check how to manage a baby fever and they said it was Georgette's turn to hit the hospital. We didn't make it home until Sunday afternoon, after they admitted her for observation and ran a series of blood tests. Fever in babies under three months can get serious very quickly and they had to rule out meningitis and other nasties. Roll on Saturday night on a lumpy fold-out armchair, reading New Idea and eating mystery casserole.

Before they would let us leave on Sunday I had to 'catch' a urine sample. This involves holding the baby on your lap, watching for action and catching the wee in a specimen jar when it appears. This is much harder than it sounds. I stared unblinking at Georgette's nethers for an hour-and-a half. I sang every water-related song I could think of, from 'Islands In The Stream' to 'By The Rivers Of Babylon.', but I failed to catch a wee. (I do feel confident that I could pick my daughter out in a line-up though.) Eventually the nurses attached a plastic-bag apparatus. So there we sat, me and the George, on a peeling vinyl armchair; she nude from the waist down with a swinging plastic bag in place, and me in yesterdays clothes, watching the Celebrity Apprentice. 'George,' I said, 'I think we've both lost our dignity.'

This week, things are looking up. Although I feel a little ground-down, I have only low-grade cold symptoms. Last night I made an egg-free cake, decorated it with a giant chicken with a cross through it and we hoofed it down while watching Punky Brewster (season 1.) Nobody threw up. Not a one. Happy times!

And alls well that ends well with little baby loved-a-lot.

Celebrity Death Match : Croup Vs Fairies

2011-10-25T08:27:00.006+11:00

I thought the monster tick allergy would fill our medical emergency quota for the month, but nay, my friends. Ranch Mogantosh is once again bedeviled with the pox.

On Monday night, Teddy stumbled into our bedroom, flushed and overheating. He slept between Keith and I that night (thank god, for once George stayed in her bassinette between feeds), tossing, kicking and waking up shouting about tigers. (He's afraid of tigers, Ted. Tigers and pigeons.)

Next day, he was loony and hyper, we were frazzled and Ivy started to get fractious and hot. My careful to-do list started to fall a bit behind. Late that night, Ivy started barking in her sleep. I went in to check and had one of those scary midnight-moments where it dawns, in stages, that something is not right. She's breathing weird. Is she breathing weird? She's breathing really weird. She's not saying much. Can she talk? She can't talk. Then Keith and I went into trip-to-emergency mode; moving fast, speaking slowly, hyper-calmly, while on the inside the panic is rising, rising.

Ivy, of course, was having a blast. Attention, adventure, all in the middle of the night! Her breathing was raspy and laboured, but her eyes shone with the thrill of it all, and as she and Keith pulled out of the driveway, she waved at me from the front seat - the front seat, Mum! - with absolute elation.

At the hospital they diagnosed croup, that old bastard, doped her with steroids and sent her home. Ivy, having been in that same emergency room just days before, worked the nurses big time. 'By any chance,' she asked, 'might there be a lollipop?'

Yesterday she was still unwell and called us to her bedside time and again. I gave her Panadol and tucked in beside her for a while, as requested, cramped like a mantis in her little toddler bed. Finally I said I was going to my own room. She complained. 'I'll check on you in ten minutes,' I said.

'Okay, ' Ivy relented. 'But then I need you to check on me ten minutes after that and ten minutes after that and ten minutes after that until it's the morning.'

'Anything else?' I asked.

'Not at the minute,' she said.

This morning, Keith went down in a sweaty, fevered mess. This virus is harsh, and he's only got mantibodies, you see. With him sick, my whole show really went to hell in a handcart. At lunchtime everybody needed trays in bed. Then Teddy chose today to start acting out some attention issues by urinating next to his potty and also crapping his Wiggle underpants dramatically. (Those babies went straight into a plastic bag in the bin. Sorry, the Earth. Please understand I just could not add scrubbing gussets to my day today.)

Of course I've been desperately trying to shield George from all these coughing, sneezing germ machines. Tiny baby with croupy virus - bad news. So far she's OK.

But I'm pretty rooted. There is wet washing in the machine, and dirty dishes on the table. There is no bread, no milk and no fruit in the house. My long lists of cooking, cleaning and crafting preparations for this weekends party are looking a little...ambitious.

Pox - 1.

Fairies - o.

Happy Anniversary

2011-10-24T22:42:00.004+11:00

Two years ago today, I married this brilliant, kindly, goofy boffin. Our relationship is the most important, precious thing in my life and I plan to cherish and nurture it for the rest of my days. (I would say nights too but they are currently taken up with breastfeeding and blanket-replacing and reassuring little people that tigers aren't going to eat them.)

Happy anniversary K Dog. This one goes out to you.

Andiamo!

2011-10-23T20:13:00.006+11:00

Georgette is dismayed by the savagery with which her siblings attack the (egg-free) chocolate cake mix.

Well creeping Jesus, that was quite a week. On Friday, skipping happily into the hospital emergency room, Ivy said 'It's all about me again, Mum, isn't it!' Yes, I agreed, trying not to let my face betray the sick anxiety I felt over the vicious red rash that was covering most of her body and the giant tick I had just discovered embedded in her head. 'Ivy, Ivy, Ivy, Ivy, Ivy!' she shouted with joy.

The tick was duly extracted and since then, her rash has almost entirely cleared up so hopefully the series of allergic reactions she's had this week have been caused by that, and not the egg allergy the docs are testing for. Imagine my hilarity when her forehead and nose swelled up hugely on her day of kindy orientation. It was not an auspicious start - Ivy was cranky at me for not respecting some princess-related demand of unreasonableness on the way to school, so on her first meeting with her new teacher she looked like a small disgruntled Neanderthal. Gifted and Talented classroom? I asked. Just down the hall is it?

It was scary stuff. Meanwhile, she's in fine form and obsessed with craft so while the house is an shocking mess..at least half the mess glitters, which is not nothing. Ted remains a small, affable lunatic, always looking for nude fun, and still crapping in corners.

George is our beautiful squiggly buddy, who's decided she will only sleep when held by an actual person, so we are living in squalor. We're so confined to barracks right now what with the breastfeeding and the toilet-training.

Next weekend, Ivy is having a flower fairy tea party for her birthday. We have house-guests plus a small contingent of five-year-old fairies to cook and craft for. This week my plan is purely domestic. I'm declaring war on clutter and I plan to be super-organised in order to not end this Friday night like the last, where Keith sent me to Time Out at 7pm for being a stressed-out, neurotic pain in the arse with my crazy eyes too desperately focused on the clock counting down to children's bedtime.

No jury would have convicted me mind you. In fact a jury of mothers would have bought me a drink and two soothing Italian manservants for just making it to 7pm Friday without taking off for a little anonymous hotel down the coast and a nice lie-down, and a fluffy bathrobe, and a room service club sandwich, and a bath...and...and...

Where was I?

Yes, next week, onward and upward. I plan to be on top of all my tasks and maintain a level of good-natured amusement at all antics from glitter glue on the floor to poos in the shoes.

Breathe. Smile. Stomach in! Tits out!

And forward!

Ivy.

2011-10-20T13:54:00.005+11:00

My big girl turned turned five this week. I want to linger with my thoughts over a five-year-old Ivy post, so more on that later. But here she is on her birthday morning.

My sweet girl.

Right now I've got column deadlines, overflowing laundry, ploppy-pants (not mine) and a possible child's egg allergy (jeez, no, please) to manage, so

I'm

audi

for now.

Love and kisses to your missus.

Creative Space - Recycled School Desks

2011-10-12T22:04:00.006+11:00

Last week Ivy, Gigi and I went on a lady date to the big op shop in town. I was in dire need of tops and out-of-the-housiness and Ivy was in need of a little Mum-time. We had an excellent time wandering the aisles admiring each others taste in old and shiny things and then we struck op-shop gold in the form of these battered old school desk on sale for six smackers each.

We took our little mission to Bunnings next for paint and sandpaper and then went home where I advised Ivy to go on the immediate offensive with her long-suffering minimalist father. 'It's not crap, Dad!' she shouted as he opened the car door. Just as trained.

This laminate was really in bad shape but Ivy's Sale Of The Century spokesmodel pose shows promise.

Unfortunately I alwasy FREAK OUT when buying paint and in a last minute tic, switch choices to a shade just below my original choice. So this blue doesn't pop so much as whimper a little. But it's still a nice happy blue.

And the school desks have been on high colouring-in, dot-to-dot, maze-puzzle and writing practice rotation ever since.

More creative spaces over here.

The Sound Of One Hand Typing

2011-10-10T21:54:00.006+11:00

Babe in arms.

Always.

Turning into total hermit.

Luckily have beautiful bunting banner made with love by girlfriends as baby shower gift. It hangs above crafty almost-five year-old and giant pile of washing to remind me that when I have time to re-enter the outside world (two or three years, perhaps) there are friends out there.

(Babe asleep beside me! No longer doing grunty squiggles! Furious two-fingered typing ensues.)

Out There, in the world outside this nest of looping schedules and dried fruit and two-hourly feedings and three-year-old boys needing cuddling and comforting, and almost-schoolgirls needing colouring-in assistance and lots of discussion the important upcoming flower fairy tea-party.

(Patting required. Back to one hand.)

I am in constant motion. In the daytime when Keith takes a lunch break, we eat on the deck and then I lie down for a spell while he teaches Daddy School where he likes the kids to address him, for no good reason, as Mr. Blake. I do have a pic of that. I'll post it some other time. Maybe.

After we get the big bobos off to bed at 7.30, I am into the bath like a shot, while Keith takes George. Once I crawl out, we roll into the evening proceedings, which involve more squiggling and grunting and general baby craziness through the wee small hours. In the off moments I sleep the sleep of the zombie dead.

So not much space, or free handedness, for blogging. Or socialising. My relationship capacity seems to have withered to a place of 'liking' the Facebook statuses of my friends. Good one! I'm trying to say. Nice one there! Hello! I still love you! I am here!

I lost my mobile shortly after the babelet was born and I haven't replaced it yet, so I'm even more cut off from the outside. But I feel like I need to. Managing the domestic and emotional needs of this little family of mine has me at capacity right now. I am so happy buried in this little world. But I have no room left for anything much else right now.

This post is all over the place like a mad womans shit.

It was intended as a THANK YOU to my lovely friends who sewed this beautiful piece of art for me. And an explanation for where I've been to any of you who've missed me.

I love you.

I'll see you on the other side.

Piggie In A Blanket.

2011-10-04T21:34:00.003+11:00

Six weeks old, this squidgeling, my sweet barnacle, six weeks old and going gangbusters. She has started smiling and the whole family is wasting swathes of time trying to get her to pop out her giant dimple.

But look, look at the beautiful hand-knitted blanket that arrived this week from my darling friend Sally in Switzerland. The colours are gorgeous and it is as soft as her bottom.

Thanks so much Sal. We will treasure this always.

Howdy, Spring.

2011-09-30T21:37:00.004+10:00

A rare moment here: the children are all asleep, I have stopped roaming the halls in a perpetual loop of motion - settling the baby, scaling mountains of washing, feeding the children, main-lining coffee and yet, I am not unconscious; my only other state these last few weeks.

(This babelet is six weeks old! She smiled her first unmistakable, gappy, dimpled grin today. Cockles, be warmed.)

I miss writing. I still write in my head but am struggling to find the moments to commit pen to paper (sadly, 'fingers to keyboard' just has no romance.) Oh lordy, life is busy busy. But I am lucky enough to be hurled into the whirlwind of mothering three kids under five after a hideous bastard of a year.

Context is everything.

A little sleep deprivation and back pain? A pair of squabbling tinies and a chaotic messy house? BAH! Nothing compared to the displaced pelvis of my third trimester. Or the panicky, exhausted depression of my disrupted thyroid. Or, in the most painful truth of all, the heartbreak that my brother and sister-in-law suffered through when they lost baby Autumn just last June.

I am feeling so much better than I did that I can only feel relieved and grateful for the parting of the clouds. The Mogantosh ranch, as spring unfurls, is a busy, crazy joint. Small people are underfoot in every corner, potties are kicked over, the washing basket overflows, and yesterdays craft competes for space with the washing up.

I am grateful for every tender, ramshackle moment.

In Which Keith Explains Some Of His Incomprehensible Research And The Children Are Massively Busted

2011-09-23T20:42:00.009+10:00

Right now, George is tucked happily beside Keith who is watching the football, drinking beer and tinkering with complicated-looking graphs on his computer.*

Ted is in trouble for coming out of his bedroom all night. Right now he's been banished to the playroom for three minutes where he's wailing on the floor. We're taking turns using the Stern Voice on Teddy and cuddling little George.

I'm trying to capture some thoughts, now that I am working with both hands. I'm doing a lot of reading on the computer and watching shows while breastfeeding in the middle of the night but while my muscle memory is tapping back into many one-armed skills I've refined over the last five years, typing is not one of them.

Life is settling into a new rhythm. My doc diagnosed me with Post-Partum Thyroiditis, a fairly common baby-related thyroid disruption. It often resolves itself naturally, and I'm sure mine is doing that, because I feel so much better than I did a week ago. I'll write more about that soon, but in short I just need to monitor my thyroid with blood tests and medicate it if it spirals out of control again.

Generally, I'm realising that life with these three small firecrackers just means more of everything. More chaos. More stress. More joy. More laughter. More love.

So much love.

So much laundry.

I think that a happy domestic life for us will require an intensive structure and a willingness to let go of the structure completely. I'm trying to manage the highs and lows by taking it slow, enjoying the small moments, and letting us all find our feet.

I'm having some transcendent moments of happiness. The luck, the joy, the blessing of three healthy children, a beloved husband and a happy home in a free democracy... And other times, I'm overwhelmed by the task at hand. Yesterday I shouted at the children 'You are MASSIVELY busted!' (I'm not a big shouter. I confess it felt great to bellow this.)

I can't remember the details of their transgression, but it likely involved property crime (Ivy took my spoon) or actual bodily harm (Teddy kicked me in the ear) followed by high-pitched screaming. They both got sent to separate Time Outs and then I recalled them for a short lecture in my Grown Woman's voice along the lines of 'I expect better behaviour from you both, you are three and four years old, not babies, blah blah blah. ' They both gazed at me calmly. 'Do you understand me Teddy?' I asked. 'Well, Mummy, ' he said. 'Did you know I has a little penis?'

The day before I ranted at them with crazy eyes 'Can you HEAR Mummy is at the end of her rope? Can you HEAR it in Mummy's voice?' (Confession -this monologue felt really good too.) While Keith was in Canberra for two days this week I found myself simultaneously trying a comfort a crying George, talk Ted through a lengthy defecation episode and fix a recalcitrant Peppa Pig DVD. Inside my head the lambs were screaming. 'Is you doing your best, Mum? asked Teddy. Yes, I replied. 'Well, is not very good', he said.

Today I left them playing merrily in the lounge room while I fed George in my quiet bedroom and watched My Great Big Gypsy Wedding on YouTube. I thought everything was going really well until I emerged find both children paused in a guilty tableau. Ted was standing on a table trying to poke a broomstick into the ceiling fan that Ivy had climbed a chair to turn on High.

My mother-in-law advised me that if everybody was alive at the end of the day, that I was doing a good job. Well, they are today Mama.

Just.

* Specifically, he says he's working on empirical fits to develop algorithms that predict the efficiency of solar cells based on the photo-luminescent images of their pre-processed wafers.

Nits.

2011-09-21T21:06:00.006+10:00

This piece first appeared as a column in Practical Parenting Magazine, August 2011. It predates the arrival of the sweet package Georgie Bones and subsequent post-partum meltdown.*

Pre-schoolers don’t believe in personal space. When sharing your bed, they like to sleep on your head, when you visit the toilet they come in to see exactly what you’re up to, and when playing with their friends, there are no physical boundaries whatsoever. Parents don’t especially love this desire to get up close and personal, but you know who does?

Head lice.

With one four-year-old and one toddler, I’m deep in pre-school and day-care land. It was only a matter of time before we had our first infestation. My mellow, scientist husband was not enormously helpful. ‘Do you have to worry about nits?’ he asked. I looked at him blankly. ‘I mean, is it unhealthy if they just… stay living on the kids heads?’ I took a deep breath and painted a little picture of primary-school social exclusion followed by an adulthood in which our children lived in a shed out the back, writing manifestos about anarchism while building homemade explosives. He came around.

I didn’t want to use pesticides and unpronounceable compounds on my children’s heads before I tried the conditioner option first. This method involves stunning the little critters with gallons of hair conditioner. It doesn’t kill them but it renders them comatose long enough for you to pry them all out with a fairy-sized Comb of Pain. You have to do it every day for a week so you get all their eggs too.

It was a miserable process. First, I sat in the bath with Peanut and T-Bone comb-torturing them while T-Bone whimpered and Peanut screamed ‘You’re HURTING me! You’re HURTING me!’ Which I was, of course. Mainly by genetically gifting her with stupidly thick hair. Then I had to shower the kids one by one. This was an especially tough call with two-year-old T-Bone, who struggles with the logic of shampoo. He likes to tip his head forward and stare blindly into the soapy water as it runs into his eyes.

So he fought me with all of his stocky fifteen kilos, using every limb to push off every wall, as I held him under the water and begged for mercy. Finally I got his head clean and put Ivy in. She’s fiercely independent. ‘I will do it,’ she insisted. ‘Don’t look at me! Nobody look at me!’ I obediently turned my head away just in time to see T-Bone doing a revenge wee on the clean towels. Then Ivy slipped over on the shower floor, which had become a treacherous slime pit of conditioner and tiny unconscious nits.

Did I mention I was pregnant? In the end we all cried, the nits survived, and I was forced to repeat the farce about six more times before their heads were finally clear of insect squatters. Then, of course, they headed back to pre-school to play hat-swapping games and start the miserable cycle again. But I have a solution, my friends. Lateral thinking. Next outbreak, I’m going to suggest we get the kids to play Chimpanzee, where they tackle the problem by picking the bugs painstakingly out of each other’s hair. They can sit as close as they like! Happiness for everybody. Nit problem? What problem?

*But I'm doing much, much better.

Here Come A Little Sun.

2011-09-18T21:38:00.005+10:00

Thank you all so much for your advice and support after my last post.

I really am feeling a huge chunk better.

Truly, the unloading of the heavy heart is so therapeutic. I still feel under-fit. I'm tired, a bit odd and shaky at times, and slightly battered. But my overwhelmed malaise of last week has passed for now. Connection - with Keith, with family and with friends, has been a Wiggles Band-Aid to my soul. .No matter how crap I'm feeling, if I can rally my sense of humour, I can handle it. When I spiral to the sad and negative, I withdraw. I feel disconnected with those around me. I lose my mojo.

Gastro will do that to a gal. And also the existential adjusting to the new shape of my life. I came across this Anatole France quote this week: "All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.” Food for thought.

This weekend has been a recuperative festival of sunshine, local fairs, family dance parties, laundry and sleep-ins. The pic here shows Ivy, Ted and Ivy's beloved friend Ava kicking back on the grass at the Otford Fair. Tomorrow I have some more tests to establish just what's up with my quirky thyroid. Wish me luck.

Thank you again, each and every cracking one of you.

Not So Much OK.

2011-09-15T20:36:00.004+10:00

Posting: sporadic.

Mood: erratic.

It's R U OK Day in Australia today, a suicide prevention initiative aimed at encouraging people to talk about their worries. I've been thinking about this today, becuase I've been feeling

not

OK.

This blog has never been a shiny place for me to be a supermama, even though it is the space where I tend to turn my everyday dramas into lowbrow comedy for the amusement of me, my mother, and my mother-in-law. I am honest here. But in life, I absolutely believe in finding the funny wherever it lives. So I've been kind of absent while life has been a little more tragi than comi.

Since George was born my recovery has felt like I've been wading through quicksand. Slow. Painful. Every leaving of the house has taken a huge chunk of my energy and set me back a day or two. This week, George turned four weeks old, Keith finished his paternity leave, and we copped a round of gastro. It kind of flipped my last switch, sending my energy stores down from 50 % to 25%. I can't remember my old life, my old self, how I managed. I am panicky about how I will manage the future. Three small children to wrangle, and I can't do the washing up without a Bex and a good lie down to recover.

I called Mum, bless her linen trousers, and she came on the train and stayed for three days. Ivy hurled her guts up for one full day and then moaned loudly and theatrically for the next. Ted, small blonde tornado, motored from activity to activity leaving trails of Lego and art supplies and shitty Wiggles underpants. Georgette, happiest when cuddled, needed to be on the boob a lot. My milk supply, affected by the tummy bug, was down, so she's been feeding slowly and often.

Chaos. Chaos.

I haven't been able to eat much this week. Nauseous. So I've been really feeling that sapping of strength spiralling downwards. The doc has run some blood tests. I tell you, I was gutted when my iron levels came back normal. I was hoping that I was anaemic, a nurse could shoot me full of blood with a giant comedy syringe and I would do jazz runs out of the medical centre and back into my busy, happy, energetic life. Nope. Normal, dammit. I do have to go and see her to discuss my thyroid though. A new and different beast to me. I have no idea what will come of that.

Last night, I had a little meltdown and unloaded to Keith in one of those inarticulate, gulping, halting monologues that feel impossible and pointless but end up releasing a great weight. I emailed friends today, told them I was messy and organised coffee.

I feel better.

Sharing is good.

How about you guys?

Are you OK?

Happy Fathers Day

2011-09-07T21:17:00.003+10:00

A belated Fathers Day post to my beloved K-Dog.

Who looks smoking hot strapped to a baby on the beach.

And can change a nappy and watch the football at the same time.

Could one ask for more?

I think not.

Upswinging.

2011-08-31T21:23:00.002+10:00

Spring begins tomorrow.

I can feel my strength returning, and that's good.

I think I will need it.

Look at all these little people I must feed and scrub and kiss and chase...

Hospital Scenes.

2011-08-28T20:25:00.007+10:00

Friends, all is well here in babymoon land, but I am not in tip top shape.

Georgette is divine. She feeds, sleeps and squiggles around. Not a naughty peep to be heard. Ivy and Ted are being loving and gentle big siblings. And I've taken to calling Keith 'Alice' as he house-husbands around the place like a champion.

But I'm still feeling a little like an elephant sat on me. I went out last week to visit pre-school, the library, and grab a coffee. Three days later I'm still recovering from that little jaunt. I still feel incapable of really talking to anybody without leaking tears, and so I remain in my little cave.

I've lost a little too much weight I think, and I did not go into this round of baby-production totally match fit. Tonight I hoovered a giant steak. Calcium tablets are on the shopping list. And Alice is on duty for two more weeks, so I can rest, breastfeed, and get my mojo back.

In the meantime, a last little round of hospital pics. And if I owe you a call or an email, bear with me.

Gorgeous George

2011-08-23T21:39:00.007+10:00

Still in lockdown over here at Ranch Mogantosh. I'm feeling a slow returning to myself , in body and in spirit, while Keith is doing a great job running the home show; washing, cooking and entertaining the smallies. Georgette and I are in the baby cave, establishing a good breastfeeding rhythm, sleeping and getting to know each other. I've hardly seen or spoken to anybody. I just feel immrsed in the family at the minute, and this babymoon won't last forever.

Some more pics from the hospital to share here though.

If you're live in or near Sydney and are looking for a portrait photographer to shoot candid footage of your family, or to capture a special occasion, I can't recommend Shirin Town highly enough. If you say that Georgette sent you, she will even spot you a 20% discount on her rates, because she's a blogger-lover.

Welcome, Georgette March.

2011-08-19T20:10:00.002+10:00

Well, my friends, it's taken me a week to get it together to post our lovely news: baby Georgette was born on Friday August 12th. Just under 3 kilos and 50 cm long.

This third (and final) caesarean section really took the stuffing out of me, following as it did upon the heels of a tough third (and final!) pregnancy. There were a few dramas, including a lengthy, excruciating search for a place to put a spinal block, which ended with Georgette's delivery under general anaesthetic. I don't know too many births that don't come with some level of trauma, but for me, I can't think too hard about that panicky, terrible 45 minutes in the operating theatre while somebody dug around in my spine with a needle. Recovery was much more painful this time around, I think largely due to the bedraggled state I was in by the end of the pregnancy. And a chest infection I caught in hospital hasn't helped the healing abdomen too much.

But every day, I'm feeling closer to the old human I was, thanks to antibiotics, and the loving ministrations of the old Keithmeister (father of three! Oh my.)

And in the end, what a reward at the end of the rainbow. This little babe is a feeding machine, a porker-in-progress. She's got big navy eyes that, when she opens them, wear an expression of sort of goofy suspicion. She's adorable.

(Photo taken on day 2 in the hospital by my lovely and talented friend Shirin Town. You can see her work or contact her for portraits by searching for Shirin Town Photography on Facebook.)

Mama Milestones

2011-08-06T21:18:00.002+10:00

This post was originally published as a column in Practical Parenting Magazine, July 2011.

Especially with our first babies, we parents are obsessed with milestones. I remember poring over the books when Peanut, now four, was in her first year. I fretted that she wasn’t rolling over when she should and I felt ludicrously proud to see she was a very early pointer. With T-Bone, now two, I occasionally checked. And little Plum, some months into gestation, will probably barely make it to the baby nurse. But lately I’ve been thinking that there are another set of milestones that go largely unrecorded. The Mama Milestones. Those points in time that mark the profound transformation from the person you were before kids into a softer-of-tummy and messier-of-wardrobe creature renamed Mummy who cries watching the news and smells more Eau de Vom Bomb than Diorissimo.

First public breastfeed

Before children, the idea of getting your knockers out at a coffee shop, in front of your father or at a smart dinner party is not something most of us entertain. (Except if you live in one of those neighborhoods where the dinner parties take a certain turn after the cheese platter. No judgment.) Generally, once you have a baby (unless you plan on staying home permanently) there will be times when you need to breastfeed while out and about. In the early days, you may fiddle with wraps and covers and bosom-burquas in the safety of the stinky shopping-centre Parents Room. But after a while, most mamas get so proficient at the Unclip Bra/ Locate Baby’s Face/ Clamp and Attach/Do Not Meet a Senior Citizens Eye routine that we forget all those previous taboos against the boob flash and merrily feed the baby anywhere, anytime.

The first day-care drop-off

How can another person know the language, the idiosyncrasies, the little noises and symbols that mean your little person is hungry/thirsty/tired/bored? Will the teachers love your child? Will your child be bullied? How will you know what is really happening all day? Early day-care days are torturous, but two months in, that solo latte after drop-off is a like a heady cocktail of freedom.

First time your toddler drops their day sleep

Oh, the humanity.

First Public Humiliation.

Small children who possess language but have not yet added the civilizing aspect of tact are like a loaded social gun. Their random shots can take many forms, from ‘Mummy, why does that lady smell like poo-bum?’ to ‘Look, it’s that man from across the road that Daddy called a filfy alco-mo-holic.’ You can do nothing to prevent these verbal grenades.

First time you realize you can’t be a perfect parent

When Peanut was three, she said ‘Oh dear, my back is really sore. I haffa lie down,’ and my heart sank. She was imitating her mother, and I knew that meant that having a Mum with a ‘bad back’ was going to be part of her life story. I cried. I wanted to be perfect for her, and I knew then that I never would be.

The making of a mother, I‘ve been thinking, is a lifetime job, made up of a thousand little Mama Milestones like these; some sweet, some humiliating, and some tough to take. As my little people grow up and transform, so do I. If I’m lucky, there are many more milestones ahead for this Mama, and only a small number of them will involve neighborly disputes, supermarket shaming or public breast-baring.

Step-Up Week

2011-08-06T21:14:00.002+10:00

This post first appeared as a column in Practical Parenting Magazine, June 2011. I know this one was written early in pregnancy because I was not yet a miserable waddling grumpy shut-in.

I woke up this morning to find four-year-old Peanut tucked under my arm. She had crept into my bed in the early hours, and her tiny pixie face was as beautiful in sleep as anything I’d ever seen. She woke up as I watched her, kissed me on the arm and said ‘Good morning Mummy. I dreamed you were Luke Skywalker.’ Trailing behind me as I crept around getting ready to go for an early swim, she chatted sweet, oddball nonsense, and I left her eating an apple on the lounge, looking through her Junior Masterchef cookbook and waiting for Daddy to wake up and make breakfast.

Swings and roundabouts, I thought in the car as I drove off. Ivy was the sweetest creature in town that morning. And yet, the night before, she could have been the poster child for lunatic devil-spawn as she refused to eat her dinner and stomped off, squealing like a piglet, into Time-Out. Parenting is all swings and roundabouts.

Keith and I are having what we think of as a Step-Up Week, a sudden naughty patch that requires us to pull out more heavy-duty discipline. Normally we respond to the demands of life with pre-schoolers by using endless negotiation, constant counting to three, and retreating to a quiet place inside our own heads. But this week both Ivy and her two-year-old brother T-Bone are displaying what you might call challenging behaviours. On a good day I might call it Testing Boundaries. On a bad one I call it Sucking the Very Life from My Soul, and to recover from a day of it, I must lie horizontally on the couch in a vegetative state applying chocolate to my mouth for at least an hour. More like two, if I’m honest. Sometimes three. The chocolate/couch ratio is heavily dependent on how much the children have worn away my will to live that day.

This week Peanut has been fighting in the classic pre-schoolers battleground: the dinner table. She is a wily opponent who tries to divert attention from her lack of eating through vivacious conversation. She’ll chat away like a talk-show host on a variety of increasingly desperate topics to avoid the actual eating of the food, as one by one, her privileges and treats are revoked. Dessert is off the menu. Charlotte’s Web won’t be read tonight. Stuffed animals will be sleeping on the naughty shelf. She stomps, making unearthly noises, in and out of Time Out.

This week, three nights went on this pleasant manner and then Keith offered a helpful hint. ‘Maybe if we had something nicer for dinner tomorrow,’ he suggested. I looked at him for a long moment. ‘That didn’t come out right,’ he said.

Meanwhile, T-Bone, is going through a little separation anxiety phase. Yesterday, as we watched Peanut in her swimming lesson, I tried to talk to the person next to me. T-Bone saw this as a monstrous betrayal of our relationship. ‘Turn you face around! Turn you face around!’ he begged, pulling desperately at my chin. In case he hadn’t made his point, he then banged his fists on my leg and shouted ‘Mine! Mine! Mine!’ for a good five minutes.

The new baby, on the other hand, has its own needs. Gestating away merrily, this month it has demanded lemon cordial, gherkins, mountains of Turkish Delight and lazy nights watching cooking programs. Frankly, I’m delighted with the good behaviour of Child 3. Now I just have to sort out the other two.

The Magic Years

2011-08-06T21:09:00.004+10:00

This post first appeared as a column in Practical Parenting Magazine, April 2011. Sorry for the confusion, I'm a little behind. And a-big in front! I'm here all week, try the fish, etc.

Pre-schoolers don’t inhabit the same world as adults. Have you noticed? Not just because they see everything at half height and have that enviable lifestyle where Parent Servants anticipate and fulfil their every need. But more importantly, because they live in a world of magical possibility, where grown-up rules of reality, logic and social behaviour don’t apply. In developmental psychology, this age is called The Magic Years, and when you are a stay-at-home parent, you spend a lot of time in this psychedelic wonderland.

Through the eyes of a small child, nothing is too outlandish to be possible. Bunnies bearing chocolate? Flying reindeers? Fairies that trade teeth for cash in the dead of night? To a child, these are no more outrageous than play-back tape recorders, or drive-through hot chips, or hair-drying machines that can blow hot air right at your face!

Little-person life is enchanting. Four-year-old Peanut lives a rich fantasy life in which she can inhabit a dozen characters before breakfast and T-Bone, at two, is just starting to enter the world of make-believe. Last week he began insisting that he was addressed as Trixie-Jeff. This would have been fine except that T-Bone is the most agreeable of children, while his alter-ego Trixie-Jeff was a demanding, obstreperous diva. No matter the question, T-Bone would answer ‘No! But I Trixie-Jeff! But no!’ (And once, memorably: ‘No! But I Trixie-Jeff! And I dot a fruity poo-bum!’)

I love this free-ranging imaginary world. Sometimes, however, I’ve found that it’s important to establish the line between fantasy and reality. Last Christmas, for instance, Peanut became obsessed with genies. She might have been confusing them with Jesus - it was the season - but we explored it anyway.

'What do genies do exactly, Mum?' she insisted. 'Well,’ I said, ‘they live in old tea-pots and if you rub the pot gently they come out and grant you three wishes.' Peanut’s face took on the familiar fervour of intense pre-school passion. It was as if Luke Skywalker and the Wiggles had delivered her to the Jurassic period on a giant blueberry. 'Here are my grant-wishes, Mum', she cried joyfully. 'A walking apple, a baby made just for kids, and a pineapple pie.'

She hounded me to the kitchen to search for teapots. I found two, and we sat on the floor and rubbed the first one. 'Genie, genie, talk to me,' I droned. 'Grant me wishes: one, two, three!' Ivy threw open the lid and looked inside. 'Not today,' I said.

T-Bone did the next one. 'Genie, genie, what you do, wake up!' he sang. Ivy looked inside that lid too, desperately, and finding it empty, her little heart broke. 'Oh no!' she wailed as she threw herself on the rug and sobbed with the painful realisation that no pineapple pies or pet babies were forthcoming. 'Peanut, honey, genies aren't real,' I said. 'They just live in books and in games. But they are still wonderful.'

The sweet, fleeting magic years hold a special charm for parents too, as we see life through the pre-schoolers prism of magical possibility. As my little ones grow up, their worlds will widen, Santa will be outed, the Tooth Fairy debunked, and life will be, sadly, a little more realistic. A world without bunnies bearing chocolate? Not for a few more years, I hope.

Endgame.

2011-08-01T20:43:00.004+10:00

The countdown is on. Plum is exiting via zipper a week early, due to my general state of decay. The baby is a good size, and there's no medical problem with an early arrival. Me, I'm happy. As the last week or so has passed, I've ground more and more to a lumbering halt.

I remember, with a sort of hazy distance, the past where I could run four or five errands at a time, juggling tiny people and groceries and complex to-do lists, and even had a good time doing it all.

Right now, I need an hour to recover after hanging out the washing. Elvis the pelvis is still very unhappy, and the chronic pain is grinding me down. I have let go of all my romantic ideals about enjoying this last pregnancy and am just focused on getting to the end now. I'm in withdrawal mode a little from outside life and relationships, and just trying to get through the basics of household management and preparing for next week. I can't get around much, so I've concentrated all my nesting urges into Plum's dresser drawers. My friend Sarah says they look like the work of a serial killer.

Everybody is good. Last night at dinner Ivy said 'Do you want to hear a joke? Teddy did a poo up his nose and then he died!' Kieth and I stared blankly at her. 'Kidding!' she said brightly. After dinner Ted did his Marilyn Monroe impression for us, and if you haven't hear a two-year-old boy sing 'I don't mean rhinestones...' well, you haven't lived.

My most darling Keith turned 40 today. We gave him a fancy magnifying glass, some philosophy and some cashews. His favourite things. His first words of this second half of his life: 'This is preposterous!' Ivy, at 3am, threw a wobbly when she wet one pair of tracksuit pants and was offered a replacement pair that were NOT PINK.

Life, at the minute, is a little preposterous.

Jinxed

2011-07-27T14:47:00.002+10:00

Um..scratch the title of yesterday's post. Make that all's well that ends without Mum getting gastroenteritis... please, in the name of all that is good and holy in this godforsaken universe.

Both Keith and Ivy spent last night vomiting. Ivy is pale but OK today, but Keith, with his battered immune system, is pretty feverish and sorry still. Teddy is fine, and I am washing my hands every forty-five seconds and hoping against hope that I'm spared this round.

The last few days I have been getting very lightheaded though. I see my doc tomorrow, and can ask about it then, but did anybody out there have dizzy spells in their late third trimester?

Pourquoi?

36 Weeks: All's Well That Ends Without Gastroenteritis.

2011-07-20T21:30:00.010+10:00

Three weeks to go, my friends.

And counting.

Little hairy Plum is still kicking and squirming like mad, cramping my lung capacity, and demanding oranges and chocolate. The kids are in fine form, and Keith is almost all better.

We've gotten used to hanging out in bed, dueling laptops blinking, my Rennies balanced on the bump as I watch shows on IView and shift position every five minutes. Keith writes code for his website and tinkers happily with solar-cell-modelling programs, and we tuck our feet together and I try not to fart too much. Happy times!

I feel OK when I'm sitting or lying down. Then I think 'Oh right, better tackle that washing up/eat the rest of that Terrys Chocolate Orange', and get up. Then I double over and look dazedly for the horse that just kicked me in the crotch. Painkillers are still getting me through the later part of the day, and as the hairy Plum stacks on the weight my pelvis has been getting slightly worse. But the car is back! And even though Ivy's two best buddies have, respectively, gastro and whooping cough, she is fit as a pink, sparkly, bejeweled fiddle.

Mum and Dad have been visiting for the last few days and the close presence of Nanna and Pop has been wonderful. Yesterday Keith and I dropped the squidlets with Nanna and hit IKEA for a nesting frenzy. Pathetically, but incredibly pleasurably, he pushed me in a Swedish wheelchair through the seething mass of Sunday-shopper humanity. It was a long day. But we did good.

Tonight I cooked the man some juicy lamp chops to fuel him up for a flat-packing festival. He was in his happiest of places, teaching the kids how to use an Allen key and immersing himself in the giant puzzle-like joy of it all. He's a freak. And how I love him.

In short, the growing of this baby and the care and feeding of my two other little naughtybuttons is taking almost all my mojo. I haven't had much space to blog or write. But I did want to take a moment to remember some happy images of recent times that have gone unrecorded:

Ivy and Ted in a a little back-yard beauty spa action.

Cousin-matching #1: Four-year-old heartbreak. On a recenmt trip to Cowra, Ivy and cuzzie Isabelle are told there will be no strawberry milkshakes today, just coffee on the run for their frazzled Mamas.

Uncle Chris shows the kiddoes his ambulance.

Ivy and Belle remind me so much of me and their Mum at this age.

Tucking as many little beloveds as I can around the belly.

Cousin Matching #2: Ted and Zoe with some two-year old clone action.

Tucked up in bed at the Langham Hotel with sis-in-law Jen, watching Downton Abbey, and re-enacting our joy at the moment Lady Mary finally kissed cousin Michael. Keiths face cracks me up here.

Happy-birthday boots with my gorgeous girlfriends.

And Ivy and Ted making Jungle Juice for sick Daddy.

Clearly, amongst the whinging, there have been many happy moments. And only three more weeks to go....

My Son Is Two. Can You Spare Some Xanax?

2011-07-16T19:51:00.006+10:00

Do not be fooled by my sweet blue eyes. They shroud the unpredictable intentions of a tiny madman.

This piece I wrote for Early Years Magazine some months ago. At nearly three, Ted is ramping up the crazy, just like his sister did. Dickens may have been talking about pre-revolutionary Paris when he wrote 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times'; but the phrase applies just as well, in my battle-scarred opinion, to the period of time in which your child turns two. Ted is so full of personality, so warm and affectionate, I could burst with joy thinking about him. But two-year-olds, as a population group, are incontinent, unpredictable lunatics. And T-Bone is true to his homies.

At BiLo this week, I reached new lows of public humiliation, and with a daughter who’s not afraid to shout ‘Wow, Mum! Getting pretty fat!’ while lifting my top in the butchers, I have developed a thick skin for public shaming. No, this shopping trip, it was T-Bone’s turn, and he took naughty to a new level. Funny how quick you can forget what living with a two-year-old is like. (I do accept that having a third child might indicate that I perhaps have a more selective memory than most.)

All the way around the interminable aisles, T-Bone put on a crazy toddler show. He shouted ‘Give me it! Give me it!’ every time a shiny bauble caught his eye, and he cried loudly every time he was refused, and shouted his worst insult: ‘You are bum!’ I wheeled around frantically, throwing objects into the trolley and hissing pathetically ‘Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!’ Other shoppers refused to catch my eye. I could feel the disapproval wafting off them in waves, and when I tried to throw one or two a sort of gaily apologetic, what-can-you-do look, I could feel it contorting my face in a grimace that, rather than garnering sympathy, just indicated that on top of raising little horrors, I had failed to take my anti-psychotic medication that morning.

Four-year-old Peanut didn’t help by swinging at dangerous angles of the side of the trolley, giddy with the freedom offered her by T-Bone’s worse behaviour.

This week, T-Bone has launched himself into his Two’s with dramatic force. He swings between between hanging lovingly off my neck and begging ‘Cuddle! Cuddle!’ and throwing noisy tantrums that have kept him in constant motion between Time Out and harmonious family life. Relations between him and Peanut have spiralled downhill. She doesn’t like being told ‘you are bum’ either. Battles between them are sudden and fierce. One minute they are playing Lego happily while I wash up, and seconds later they are shrieking at an ear-splitting pitch and I am between them shouting ‘What happened? Stop shouting! Stop shouting! STOP SHOUTING!’

Even at night, as I lie in bed pondering the terrible parental irony of shouting STOP SHOUTING at the children, T-Bone’s unreasonable demands continue. Last night at midnight he began to call out in distress. ‘What is it?’ I asked blearily at his bedside. ‘I want my dinner,’ he wailed. ‘It’s the night-time, I said firmly. ‘It’s time for sleep. Not dinner.’ He was having none of it. ‘Peanut eating my dinner!’ he insisted. ‘She is asleep, T-Bone. Everybody is asleep! ‘It was hopeless. ‘No! ‘ he shouted at his highest pitch. ‘They are eating my DINNER!’

Keith and I take it in turns, miserably, to try all our tricks. We calmly pat and sing. We fetch milk. We sternly address the yelling and we place toys on the naughty shelf. Nothing particularly works. At some point T-Bone gets tired of the midnight show and decides to go back to sleep. And in the morning, while Keith and I are shattered and haggard, T-Bone wakes bright and early, chirpily jumping up and down on his bed and shouting in rhythm: ‘Change! My! Poo! Bum!’

I know this phase ends. I know it will end, and my agreeable, sweet little boy will return. I’m repeating this to myself as a soothing mantra, even as I develop an anxious facial tic and eat an unreasonable amount of restorative chocolate. But I might have to change supermarkets for the duration.

Is Forty. Is Good!

2011-07-13T21:25:00.004+10:00

In amongst the lung infections and the creaky bones and the whinging, it was my birthday last week, and I turned forty! Up until the last minute we didn't know if Keith would be well enough to make it away, but he rallied, and we flew off to Melbourne for a last-blast Mum and Dad getaway before the Little Hairy One arrives.

My lovely mum-in-law Liz minded the smallies, we had some excellent catch-ups with Keith's sister Jen, and managed a very little bit of wandering around, but we couldn't walk far. Mostly, we tucked up in the beautiful Langham Hotel, eating room service, taking baths and sleeping. One night, Keith wrapped up wooly, I strapped on my beige pelvic support undergarment, and we went to the ballet, which was just lovely.

Fancy hotel life, ballet and lipstick. It was much fun to play at grown up glamour for a couple of days.

My lovely friends bought me some beautiful boots, and wonderful packages arrived in the mail. Children sang down the phone and friends Facebooked sweet messages. Teppanyaki fun is planned with nieces and nephews. There have been visitors coming down with lunch and cakes. Girlfriends who make you lunch and then fold your washing - what could be better?

I think forty will be a fine old age to be. And in three weeks my toy-boy Dr Keith will join me in his fifth decade, and two weeks after that a new little person will come for a twenty-year sleepover at the Mogantosh Ranch.

So all is well.

Le Pathos

2011-07-09T19:34:00.006+10:00

Keith: Pneumonia. On his third round of antibiotics. Living like a hermit inside our Flu Cave bedroom (for decor, picture a landscape of humidifiers, heartburn tablets, cough lollies, hot-water bottles, pelvic support straps, painkillers, escaped Lego and tissues, and then explode a laundry bomb on top.)

Teddy: Crazed with two-year-old naughtiness. And doing the most appalling poos, three a day. Refusing to toilet train but insisting on pushing his otherwise pointless underpants around in a stroller and calling them his puppies.

Ivy: Won't take off Snow White costume. Perfecting her sulking technique. Signing her name with a question mark (IVY?) Trotting about wearing a giant pashmina attached to her head with a band so she can have long, pink hair.

Me: Elvis still rocking. Car still unfixed. Scan shows big baby (with lots of hair!)

That is all.

I'll be back next week in which I plan to practice the art of Not Complaining.

Grateful For Lady Love

2011-07-01T22:12:00.003+10:00

My neighbour and darling filthbag friend Sarah took this photo sometime last year. I've spent some time looking at it this week, remembering easier seasons, and reminding myself that the wheel will turn and we'll be happily jumping in the mud again soon.

Keith is slowly but shirley starting to rally from his terrible lurgy. He's been absolutely hammered, hardly out of bed for more than a week, and he's on his second round of antibiotics. My whooping cough test results came back negative, but my pelvis remains ambivalent about the old place in my body it used to occupy. It's still cruising about a little. I'm needing some good painkillers to make it through the latter part of the day. The pair of us are moments away from a courtesy bus to the glue factory.

But as the week has worn on, the network of women friends that surround me have appeared, one after the other, on the doorstep with pies, and salads, and slices, and cakes, and pelvic belts, and 'tummy-socks' and baby-sitting offers, and hugs and jokes and kindness.

I am so deeply grateful to have friends in my life.

More grateful over here.

An Open Letter To The U.N.

2011-06-30T12:26:00.000+10:00

Attention: Ban Ki-Moon

Re: Application for Position of Head of United Nations (Temporary).

Dear Mr. Moon,

It occurs to me that society is a little troubled lately, what with global civil unrest and nuclear proliferation and young people taking to planking when they are not using poor spelling and putting their long, spotty legs awkwardly in the corridors of buses.

As a committed world citizen and a mother of two pre-schoolers, I’d like to offer my consulting services. (Please note I am available only until July, as I’m having another baby in August and the final weeks of gestation will involve a heavy schedule of complaining, chocolate-eating and urination, while after the birth cracked and bleeding nipples would likely distract me during high-end meetings.) Until then, however, I can offer my skill-sets in the following areas:

Handling Difficult People

Like many political leaders, my children have different personalities that must be taken into account when engaging in complex negotiations. Four-year-old Ivy is theatrical and dramatic. As a toddler she banged her head on the floor when she was angry and since acquiring the gift of language, she’s taken to avowing ‘Oh my god, I think that nobody loves me’ whenever thwarted. Like many narcissistic despots, she is not yet blessed with empathy, evidenced by this morning’s query: ‘Will you be spewing for long, Mum? I want more cheesy toast.’ Two-year-old Teddy also has the erratic personality common to his age bracket. He likes to walk on his knees in public, answers every request emphatically with NO, and has, of late, inexplicably demanded to be addressed as Trixie-Jeff. Also, when angered, he shouts ‘You are bum!’ Clearly I am well-trained in the management of tyrants, megalomaniacs and lunatics. In fact, I think it will be a refreshing change to deal with the continent variety.

Punishment and Negotiation

I am not in general an advocate of corporal punishment, but I have found that creativity is key. For instance you would be amazed at how firmly you can hold down a two-year fighting his nappy change with just one leg across the chest. Another popular technique is ‘1, 2, 3, Magic’. In a political setting this would mean that when you reach ‘three’ a dictator’s beloved dirty billions are taken away and placed on the Naughty Shelf (the World Bank, for instance.) Time-Out, a perennial favourite, could involve a Micronesian island made unusable for tourism due to nuclear testing or climate change. In general, no-nonsense, Mary-Poppins-like approach is best. ‘Despots! You are skating the thin edge of the wedge. Stop your naughty genocidal oppression this instance or there will be consequences.’ Some parents advocate ‘time-in’ where you would hold the irate dictator in a close, enveloping hug until his ire is spent. This may of course present difficulties if the dictator in question wears a lot of heavy, spiky jewelry, or is prone to biting.

Managing Cultural Differences

I understand that different cultural customs and behaviors can lead to conflict and disorder. This is common in raising pre-schoolers. Alone, Ivy might cut and paste for an hour, while Ted is happy dancing solo in his room for quite some time to his Desperate Man Blues CD. When forced into a confined area, however, their different needs can lead to intense, sudden conflict, like a feminist academic sent on a romantic date with a professional footballer. Struggles over ownership in my house may include the yellow cup, the Wiggles fork and the honker. At your table they are likely over territorial boundaries, money and religious freedom. Regardless, they come from the same emotional space: Give. Me. It.

It’s also important to keep in mind that you cannot trust one party’s version of events. The truth is always likely to lie in between. Yesterday, sudden silence in the bedroom was followed by Teddy’s pained wailing while Ivy whispered frantically ‘Sorry, Ted! You’re alright! Sorry, Ted!’ When Teddy appeared in tears, and his sister was summoned to explain herself, she immediately went on the offensive and claimed ‘Teddy just kicked me three hundred times.’

In general, the arbiter of these conflicts must be firm, creatively focused on solutions, and prepared to face personal injury. (For instance, the time Teddy gave me a black eye with a chicken drumstick.)

I’m available to discuss these thoughts and my availability further. My best time to chat is either 3pm or 4.30pm on a weekday afternoon when Play School is on.

Little Rays of Sunshine Amongst The Compost.

2011-06-28T16:53:00.002+10:00

Yesterday, I hit a little wall of self-pity when I was taking out the compost. I tripped over, twisted my ankle and landed in a pile of soggy weet-bix, coffee grounds and carrot peelings. I cried.

Either I have angered some gods, I thought, or generally my fornicating, atheist godlessness has finally caused the big J to strike down some wrath upon us. We've been sort of sliding along on a big banana peel of life around here.

I'm waiting on results to see if I have whooping cough, or just the tail end of some evil chesty disease that has pitted Keith and I against each other in late-night duelling coughing fits. I'm doing much better actually, which is good, because Keith has slid further and further over the last week into the land of Death Flu. Yesterday he went to the doc who diagnosed him with asthmatic bronchitis and dosed him up on antibiotics. He's hardly been out of bed for a week.

My pelvis has become increasingly painful and I am waddling like a duck. I thought it was related to the coughing but I finally took it to the doc, who says I have pubis symphosis dysfunction, a pregnancy disorder with in my opinion an unnecessarily insulting name. Keith and I are calling the problem Elvis in an attempt to lighten the tragedy.

We bought a new car. It has broken down twice so far.

HOWEVER.

Daily, gifts of food and love arrive from the womenfolk who surround me in the lovely town I live in. Today, one minded Ted while Ivy had an extra day at pre-school. I went back to bed and snored for two hours while Keith wheezed and snuffled and tapped away at his spreadsheets.

Meanwhile, Plum kicks with joy and grows quietly away amidst the chaos. Ivy and Ted continue to be great companions. Teddy has been having nightmares that his bed is swimming away, and fallen in love with the idea of rainbows. Last night at dinner he said wistfully 'I wish a rainbow poo would come out of my bum, Mummy.' Ivy, meanwhile, has taken to patting me and asking 'How are your legs?' She's sweet.

We are blessed.

And yet, cursed.

Socks?

2011-06-16T21:22:00.003+10:00

image via

Bonjour, knitters:

Can you knit socks? I have such a jones for long knitted winter socks. Etsy is not doing it for me.

Would you like to knit me some knee socks? Or direct me to sock-knitters?

I'll pay!

Pinky Winky

2011-06-14T21:42:00.004+10:00

It seems just five minutes ago that I was living with the Black Ghost. But Ivy has turned, as daughters will, and suddenly embraced all things sparkly and glittery and pink. She's never done things by half. So her inner princess fairy-pants has burst out with a vengeance, and put paid to all those obsessions with death and dinosaurs and skulls. 'I still really like inside bodies,' she told me, 'but I don't really care about skulls anymore.' In fact she also announced last week that she's given up eating her boogies, so I guess my little girl is growing up.

Now she wishes to be called Pinky Winky. My best disciplining tool of late is to threaten 'Mummy will make you wear BROWN!'

I have rallied. This pink thing pains me, but you know, she's allowed to be her own person, dammit. Last week we found a hot pink polka-dotted suitcase by the side of the road. Can you imagine a greater thrill? Not only does Ivy want everything in her life to be pink, her very favourite game is packing to go on honeymoon.

Happy days.

ps - Thanks all for your words of kindness and support on my last post. What else is there, when the chips are down, and you're heading to funerals and strapping medical masks on your toddlers and vomiting in your own mouth, but friendship? You are wonderful.

Postcard From Crappytown

2011-06-10T19:56:00.013+10:00

I've sort of been waiting until I had some cheerier things to say before updating my blog but this seems to be a tougher season than most.

I am getting why nature doesn't approve so much of having babies at (inches from) forty. As soon as one symptom clears, the next appears. At 30 weeks, I'm struggling a bit.

Keith is, on the whole, hugely sympathetic. The last two days he has brought lunch to me in bed where I have been wallowing in the four-hour sick day I carved out between Thursday and Friday pre-school/day care pick-ups and drop-offs and all the crazy shenanigans that fill the morning and afternoon. But he has implied that at night he feels a little like he is sharing his bed with a restless, snoring walrus.

I think this is because during the night, as well as changing position constantly, I must often suddenly sit bolt upright as acid travels from my stomach up my gullet into my throat. The glamour! While sitting up chewing heartburn medication I like to quietly moan in self pity. The acid has given me a bad sore throat too, so combined with the cold I can't shake and the mongy hip giving me a saucy waddle, I am one hot mama. Smoking.

Still, silver linings: I haven't yet woken up choking on my own vomit like I did while pregnant with Ivy. Or was that Heidi Klum? Just...quickly...Google... No, not Heidi, nor Angelina. Surprising. Must have been me after all.

Ted has been in hospital once since I last posted about his asthma. He had an attack on the way to my darling nieces funeral, and we had to juggle the emergency room with getting to the church. I changed in the toilet and raced there just in time. Keith missed the service. It was amongst our worst days ever. But Teddy is is doing much better. And sweet baby Autumn is at peace.

Amongst the worry and the sadness, there have been moments like these too.

Like father, like daughter.

Roald Dahl at bedtime.

But these next two pics say it all. Especially the second where Keith and Ted are moments from being lost forever under a giant pile of unfolded washing.

On the upside, the kids continue to delight with their emerging personalities. Ivy is besotted with her pre-school best friend Ava. They have started a club called Peacock Feather, in which Ivy is named Tulip and Ava is Superstar. Teddy remains an adorable lunatic with an impressive vocabulary. They are loving sharing their room. In the morning, instead of coming in to sit on our heads and shout 'Open you eyes!' they like to chat to each other, and waking slowly while cuddling a mustachioed physicist and listening to pre-schoolers exchange rambling thoughts on life is a very sweet way to start the day.

One morning they woke up and decided to open a 'hat and towel shop'. Up there for thinking, kids.

I hope you all are doing well too, wherever you may be.

Sick Teddy.

2011-05-27T19:57:00.007+10:00

I'm about to hit the sack after a pretty long and miserable day that just escaped ending with Ted in hospital. Both kids have been sick with colds for a few days now. Hence the usual night -time shenanigans (Ivy trying to wee in her wardrobe, Teddy demanding 3am dinner) and day-time cranky cabin-feveredness. I've been trying to get up to Sydney to see my sick niece, but instead been on intensive nursing duty.

This morning I took Ted up to the doc because he was pretty wheezy, and it all got a bit scary. He was straight onto a nebuliser (a sort of gas-mask) and steroids, and we were sent off for a chest x-ray and to wait a few hours for the steroids to work. If they didn't work enough it was off to the hospital for the night. Thankfully, he responded to the roids and his chest x-ray showed no obstructions (although it was not perhaps a good day for him to be wearing hot pink stockings and a flower-appliquéd singlet.) Such fun to spend the day in suburban hell-holes entertaining a sick toddler and worrying though.

The doc has diagnosed him as asthmatic, an illness I'm going to have to learn up on. In the short term, every 4 hours for the next few days we need to put him on a hired nebuliser to blow drugs into his constricted lungs, and give him daily steroids. 'It might make him a bit hyper,' said the doctor. Understatement. Big.

As he began breathing in the medicine, Teddy gazed up at me, his sister and Keith. 'I wuv you', he told us earnestly in turn. When he was released, he stripped, danced wildly, ran up and down the corridor and shouted 'You are bum!' I watched from the lounge, dead-eyed, sapped of all life-force and holding a hot-water bottle to my angry hip.

I'm not surprised he went mental. He's on anti-biotics for an infected toe, Panadol for his flu and now steroids and four-hourly Ventolin. He's totally hepped up on goofballs. Tomorrow morning he'll probably come out of his room in a macrame headband and ask us to call him Moonbeam, but I'll deal with that on a needs basis.

Right now I'm calling this day over.

My Creative Space: Ivy's Bedroom

2011-05-24T20:13:00.013+10:00

Folks, I'm nesting. Nesting and cooking. Nesting and cooking and gestating. That's where all my creative juices are flowing at the minute. A kind friend is donating a little bed for the T-Bone, and this weekend, I hope, we're moving him into Ivy's room for some fun bedroom-sharey times.

It's taken me a while to pull this kids room together, keeping in mind that it will be shared by Ted and Ivy for a few years, and maybe Plum too. This wall is painted in Ivy's fave green (thank Dog, done before she entered the current land of all-pink-all-the-time) and covered in framed family photos, treasured books and small artworks.

The quotation on the wall is from German philosopher Goethe and reads 'Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius and power and magic in it.' Inspiring words, I think. If only I could apply them to sorting out the kitchen cupboards.

The kids book collection is below, along with Ivy's genie lamp and her changing set of treasures and collections. This filing cabinet has to live in here, so we flip it to face the wall safely, and I painted it with blackboard paint to give it some life. Ivy and Ted both like to sit quietly and scribble here.

It's a small room, so little toddler beds are perfect. This one I bought on Ebay for 99 cents! The beautiful crocheted rug was made by a ninety-year-old nun in my aunty's convent, and the space just about fits all of Ivy's many, many friends.

It's good for jumping too.

This weekend, out goes the cabinet and the bookshelf, and in goes another bed. When we have some cash, I'll add ceiling stars and planets, a big clock, and eventually, this beautiful cushion. I think they will have an absolute blast together, but in the short term, I'm nervous. Into this near-schoolgirls space goeth the Tedmeister, who is deep into a phase of toddler independence/lunacy. I'm optimistic! Lots more creative spaces to explore over here.

Independence Day

2011-05-22T20:29:00.002+10:00

This piece first appeared in Practical Parenting Magazine, March 2011. It's funny how fast life with children shifts gear. Ivy is absolutely a four-year old now. She is writing letters, dancing the hula and insisting on being addressed as Pinky Winky. Tonight she said that when she grows up she will have three professions: a writer, a ballerina and someone who 'goes in healthy eating competitions.' Then she refused to eat her cauliflower.

When my friend Sandy and I were heavily pregnant at the same time, we amused ourselves with a sort of mock argument in which I shouted ‘I hope your baby has a great big head!’ and she retorted ‘Well, I hope you have a daughter and she turns out just like you!’ At that point we looked at each other in horror and knew that we had gone too far.

Three years on Sandy has recovered from the difficult labour that ended in emergency caesarean, but the hex she dropped on me remains as strong as ever. Every day, I wake up to an independent, dramatic and strong-willed three year old daughter, and it means everyday life can be a something of a challenge. Last week I had a serious conversation with Peanut. ‘You have to realise that you are only three years old,’ I said helplessly. ‘You really don’t know everything! Mummy can still teach you some things!’ She narrowed her eyes at me sceptically.

Since this child could first speak, her catchphrase has been ‘I do it.’ Zippers, puzzles, chopsticks, sing-along’s: ‘I do it.’ Since birth, she railed against the rules imposed upon her. Sleep at night-time? Not that interested, thanks. A balanced diet? Just frozen blueberries and sausages for me today. Wardrobe that suits the weather? Fun game that Mum has devised? Nice conversation on the phone with Nanna? No, no, and - gosh, thanks for asking – but no. She’s like a tiny island fighting from independence from the mother continent, and every day she stages one or two attempts at a coup d’état. If time or circumstance forces me to overrule her, she reacts with a theatrical, passionate display of dissent.

As a toddler, for example, Peanut went through a lengthy head-banging phase that was just terrible to watch. On a memorably bad day I was forced to tie on a fluffy hat, just to preserve what was left of her frontal lobes. Occasionally I think that Peanut may be exceptionally bright. This was not one of those times.

She’s not afraid to chuck a huge tanty, and her conflict-management style can be disconcerting. Peanut’s passions are fierce but her understanding of social ritual is limited, so when a wave of frustration sweeps over her, she does a strange, squeaky ‘dinosaur’ roar and shouts ‘Oi!’ If pushed further, she’ll whisper the worst phrase she knows: ‘You’re not my best friend!’ When driven to her absolute limit, she’ll resort to the big guns, known in our house as Naughty Spitting, where a lengthy raspberry is delivered furiously at the floor before she looks up, guilty and nervous.

At three, my stubborn, determined daughter makes me laugh every day (except, perhaps, for those moments when I am weeping.) A child this age may have the ability to drive you to frustrated tears, but they also mean that you live in an amazing sort of half-reality, half-fantasy wonderland. ‘Daddy is magic,’ Peanut told me yesterday. ‘When he takes me to the toilet in the night and I don’t need to wee, he says ‘psssss’ and then I do a big wee. That’s magic!’ Yes, perhaps I am cursed with an independent daughter. But I wouldn’t change hilarious, eccentric hair on her head. (But ask me again when she turns thirteen.)

Week O'Mama's: Calamity Jane

2011-05-19T10:59:00.005+10:00

You know those women who write about motherhood so well that it seems they have gotten inside your head and coalesced your mushy, sleep-deprived thoughts into snappy, clear realisations? Those women who make you think 'what she said' with everything they write, when you're not shouting 'Testify, sister-mama! Can I get a WITNESS!'

I've got one of them for you today. I'm so pleased to introduce you to Calamity Jane who blogs at Apron Stringz. She's a writing, homesteading, wisecrackin' mama-of-two. She is such a star! And here she is:

Who are your small people?

My first born will be four in July. She is a sweet, sassy little package of firecracker. She's headstrong, independent, passionate, quick as a whip-- everything I always look for in a friend, though it's a bit challenging on a kid. My little guy is about one and a half. He is the boy version of his big sis. Firecracker #2. His first and second words were, respectively, 'ball' and 'truck.' (as a point of reference, one of #1's firsts was 'walrus')

Perhaps an impossible question to address in 25 words or less, but how do you think motherhood has changed you as a person?

More than anything else, motherhood has humbled me. I used to be very sharp, judgmental. Motherhood has softened me, stretched me. I have patience in reserves I wouldn't have been able to conceive of pre-kids. It has taught me to be flexible, to loose the reigns of control. To let go of my Ego, submit to the moment. Which makes it all sounds so lovely-- motherhood, my beneficent teacher. In truth what it often felt like was more of an enormous punch in the gut. It's easy to get down on your knees when you can't breathe.

How do you think blogging impacts on your parenting?

Sadly, I'm not sure this is a positive relationship. It's hard to say. My writing definitely detracts from everything I just said parenting teaches me. Blogging brings it right back to MeMeMe. It takes my time away from my kids and house and projects, but even more it takes my mind and energy away. It interrupts my submission by giving me something I'm almost addicted to getting away from the kids to do.

On the other hand, maybe some mamas can healthily submit to mothering entirely, but I know I couldn't. I would slowly stew in my own poison. I need something else, something that feels productive, that excersizes my brain which otherwise kind of attrophes during this whole mothering gig. Writing has turned out to be a need for me, it feels very healthy.

On the third hand, I do think blogging in particular is not entirely helpful, because of it's addictive, ever possible nature. There's always just a little more to be done/found on the internet. It's much harder for me to excersize self-control on the computer than with a book or pen and paper.

What are your most joyful times with the kids?

I think playing is boring. Which, as a mom is almost like admitting you're a nazi. I just can't get into the endless pretend, and although I enjoy rough-housing for about 2 minutes, then I'm tired. But I think I live my life playfully, even though I don't out and out play. I'm good at those things like stopping to smell the flowers, and jump in puddles. But, my happiest mama moments are when we are doing something grown-up together. When my patience is at a high, and I am letting the kidlets "help" with a project. They both "helped" me make the toddler stool I posted about a few months ago, and it was awesome. Kids need kid play, but they also adore to do whatever the grown-ups are doing. So when I am able to move slowly and patiently, and involve them, they are so happy. And I get to watch their intent concentration, their little brains sucking everything up like hungry sponges, which I love more than almost anything else.

How do you manage the frustration of life with tiny people?

Hmmm. Do I manage it? The jury is still out. One principle I've found extremely helpful in all aspects of parenting is addressing the cause rather than the symptom. I try to identify what makes me a more patient balanced person, in general, because that will make me a better mama. I know some mamas who need excersize. They are just better mamas if they force themselves to make the extra effort to do it. For me, it's mental excersize. Having time alone to think, read or write simply makes me a better mama. It took a miniature nervous breakdown for me to learn to ask for what I need. Which is regular, reliable time to do my own thing. It doesn't have to be a lot of time, but it needs to be clear cut and pre-determined. We started doing saturday afternoons. I get 5 or 6 hours to do whatever my heart desires. It is so incredibly good for me, and therefore for our family. "If mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy." Do not underestimate that!

The other thing is submission. So much of my struggling is pointless and un-productive. When I just buckle down and do a thing, it takes so much less energy than fighting the idea of it. A few months back I started picking up my daughter's room just before bedtime. This sounds simple, right? But I fought the idea of daily pick-up until she was 3 1/2!!! Why pick it up? I asked myself, she was just going to throw it all on the floor again tomorrow. She can learn to pick up her own goddamn room. I'm not a maid.

Then finally I just decided that a clean-ish room, at some point in the day, was important to me. To me. So I'd better just do it and quit bitching. And I did. It takes me about 3 minutes to pick up her room. It's part of our bedtime routine now while she hedges about which pajamas to wear. I tell her I'm making her room all clean so it will be fresh and ready for a new mess in the morning.

One family story that you love to tell?

I can't think of any one great family story. But here's a little anecdote about my 3YO. The kids were in the bath and she said she was pretending to be a hippopotamus. 'Oh,' I said, 'good thinking, because hippopotamuses live in water.' She was quiet for a minute, the wheels turning. Then she said carefully,

'Well... Hippopotamuses don't actually live in the water. They just get in the water to cool off.'

A Sweet Autumn Morning

2011-05-18T22:00:00.008+10:00

We've been away for a few days with Mum and Dad while Keith is in Singapore communing with the braniacs. Yesterday we spent the morning in the park.

Teddy wore his silver dancing shoes.

We scoffed some sweet treats from the bakery.

Ivy practiced her mad photography skills on Mummy (and Plummy.)

Then she invented an excellent new swinging game. You twist your brother up...

Twist him higher...

And let him fly!

Then we took a scenic meander home along the fencelines.

And stopped for a quick hug in the Autumn leaves.

The Week O'Mama's returns tomorrow. xx

Week O'Mama's: Veronica

2011-05-12T11:57:00.000+10:00

Todays mama is Veronica, from Sleepless Nights. I am always interested to read Veronica's thoughts when she loads a post. As a mum of two children on the autism spectrum, and suffering herself from a physically incapactiating joint syndrom (read more here about ALS), she's truly inspiring.

Veronica doesn't pretend days are rosy when they are crap. But she attacks problems head-on when they arise, with insight and humour and honesty. She has wisdom beyond her years, this young mama. And here she is:

Who are your small people? :

My small people are Amy, who is 4 and Isaac, who is 2. Isaac has been diagnosed with autism and we're waiting on a diagnosis of aspergers for Amy.

Perhaps an impossible question to address in 25 words or less, but how do you think motherhood has changed you as a person?

It's made me infinitely more and less patient, in equal measure. It's also changed my perspective. Nothing is black and white, we're all shades of grey.

How do you think blogging impacts on your parenting?

I definitely spend more time online, but on the same hand, I'm earning money and doing something solely for myself, which is great for my sanity. I am certainly more time poor when I am putting energy into social media, than when I wasn't blogging. I am also saner.

What are your most joyful times with the kids?

I love warm days when we can all be outside in the garden together. Or snuggling under warm blankets with books.

How do you manage the frustration of life with tiny people?

I don't manage it well at all. Having children on the spectrum adds an element to my frustration that is hard to articulate. It's like we're all speaking a different language sometimes and I have to remember that while Amy has great speech, her understanding can be flawed.

One family story that you love to tell? I honestly can't think of anything that stands out! Most of my family stories end up on my blog, which means they rattle around inside my head less often.

Week O'Mama's: Jodi

2011-05-10T16:12:00.007+10:00

Today's mama is Jodi, a writer, birth educator and yoga teacher from the NSW North Coast. It's a location as idyllic as her life sometimes seems. I think this might be because Jodi has a knack for finding the beauty in the everyday moments of life, and her blogging voice is gentle and wise. If you don't already read Che and Fidel, check it out. It's luvverly.

She's a bit easy on the eye too.

Here's Jodi:

Who are your small people?

Che is 3.5 and I'm currently growing a baby, due mid-winter.

Perhaps an impossible question to address in 25 words or less, but how do you think motherhood has changed you as a person?

I now know what it means to surrender and hence I understand the absolute meaning of love.

How do you think blogging impacts on your parenting?

I only started blogging when I became a muma. It's had a huge impact on the way I view my role as mother and also, on my view of the world. It's all too easy to get overwhelmed by the plethora of daily tasks that arise with children but through blogging I have learnt to be grateful for the little, everyday things. Daily expressions of gratitude are essential to my wellbeing, my happiness. I hardly ever used a camera before blogging either but looking through the lens has encouraged me to see the beauty in simplicity - a bunch of blooms, a freshly laundered pile of baby clothes, a present tied with string. Connection with other women has been the biggest and best blogging surprise. I'm so inspired and encouraged by the tales of parenting that are posted on the web; I especially appreciate the honesty imbued within some blogs.

What are your most joyful times with the kids?

Joyful: breastfeeding, co-sleeping, cuddling, exploring, sharing meals. But mostly, the conversations I have with Che; it's like I get to see the world through his eyes sometimes and that is just so precious.

How do you manage the frustration of life with tiny people?

I teach yoga and I understand the importance of releasing frustration. My partner Daniel is an amazing Dad and I learn from him every day - he's great with the reasoning, discussing and discipline side of parenting. Often when I'm frustrated as a mother it's got more to do with me than with Che. When I come to realize this I literally remove myself from the situation. A shower is good, a cup of tea always works and when all else fails I go to a yoga class or book a pedicure.

One family story that you love to tell?

I tell this story to expectant couples when I teach birth workshops and the dads love to hear it. Moments after birthing Che I was holding him and he was crying. I was tying to calm him with my words but because of all the adrenalin in my body my voice was quite high pitched and he didn't recognise my words. Daniel came and stood beside me, he leant over, looked at Che and said: "hey mate." In that instant Che stopped crying, looked into daniel's eyes and recognized his Dad. Our midwife caught it on camera - proof that babies in utero learn the voices of those close to their muma.

24 Weeks.

2011-05-10T11:15:00.000+10:00

Week O'Mama's: Sal

2011-05-09T20:09:00.008+10:00

Mothers Day at Mogantosh land was lovely. But over in one day! Hmmph.

Not here it isn't. Some of you might remember that last year over Mothers Day I ran a little series of interviews with some mamas of the blogosphere whom I find inspiring and uplifting.

This year, I feel even more drawn to stories about how we do this thing we do. (Incidentally, some of you have worried about my cryptic messages of late. I'm sorry. There's a sick baby in the family. It's not my story to tell, but it is affecting me deeply, and I try to be as honest in this space as I can. Thanks for your kindness.)

If you don't know the blog Georgie Love, it's my pleasure to share it with you. Georgie Love, run by Sally, is a beautiful handmade online gift emporium, and I know first hand how gorgeous her sensibility is, because out of the blue once, as I was deep in some parenting crisis, Sal sent me a package full of delights. It still ranks as one of my most wonderful and surprising moments in life. Unexpected love, right when I needed it.

Sal writes about her business and her life with wit, charm and honesty. And here she is, in all her cuteness:

Who are your small people?

Ruby Winter Rock who is about 2.5 and mystery baby-bean girl who is due in 9 weeks. The name debate continues.

Perhaps an impossible question to address in 25 words or less, but how do you think motherhood has changed you as a person?

Oh goodness, where does one start, I don't think anyone could predict how much parenting will change them, you really have no idea of the impact before you having small people. For me though, I think most noticeably parenting has softened me significantly. I had an odd little upbringing where emotions were mocked and ridiculed, so for a looooong time I had a lot of trouble with emotional intimacy, and basically anything to do with emotions. DrMr has this "great" quote from very early in our relationship where I declared that I "don't want to talk about the past.... or the future... or the present". Poor DrMr and anyone else who has ever attempted a romantic relationship with me. Having Ruby changed all of that in an instant, it really healed a lot of broken parts in me, made me very vulnerable and opened me to more of everything in life. It's been nothing but positive. Having kids also makes me respect and understand people who choose not to have kids, but for me - I wouldn't change our decision to. I am a much better, happier, more patient, lucky and time-poor person.

How do you think blogging impacts on your parenting?

I used to specifically blog about Georgie Love and you can see that pretty much turn on the head of a pin when we found out about Rubes (a surprise!). I never really thought I would have kids, I honestly didn't think I would ever be that lucky, or perhaps that it would be in my future. I blog a lot about parenting and life, and if I have things that are troubling me, parenting questions or advice needed, it's the first place I go to for answers. I really feel the sense of community in the blogging world and I have been lucky enough to have made some awesome friends from it too.

What are your most joyful times with the kids?

There are so many, I think each age gets better as their little personalities develop and reveal themselves. I think it's things like quiet, sleepy cuddles, and the random things - Rube's passion about wearing comfy pants and wanting to wear her pajamas (snuggle suits we call them) EVERYWHERE, her obsessions and special collections (rocks, sticks, coins, ducks and birthday candles). Most, most, most of all, when it's all of us 3.5 together - I feel that sense of family really keenly, us against the world, my little and most loved people . It's my place where I am most happy and most belong.

How do you manage the frustration of life with tiny people?

Oh man. I don't know if we are in the middle of the terrible twos or threes, but goodness we have had some crappy days of late. After one of those days and we are having a cuddle at the end of the day, I try and talk to Rubes about why Mummy was cross during the day, that we need to try and do better listening or whatever - that it's ok for her or I to be cross, but we need to balance it with being happy too. And then approach each day fresh, unmarred by a bad one before and see what the day will bring - take each tantrum or act of random craziness as they come.

Do you have one family story that you love to tell?

This is the question I found the hardest! Rubes does odd little things that make me laugh all the time, but to note one special or significant thing is really difficult. I think the thing that most fascinates me at the moment is how different each pregnancy has been, and how little personalities are already revealing themselves. Rubes was breech throughout the whole pregnancy, she was turned manually, she never engaged and I was induced for her to come out - which is kind of just her, she is obsessed with being comfortable, from her very first breath everything had to be just how she wanted it, or there would be dire consequences. With this one, she is super restless and won't stop moving, her head is already down and ready to go, impatient to come out and get on with it all. Completely different. Two very different kind of handfuls.

Cuppy's In Love

2011-05-05T11:10:00.005+10:00

Today is sad. It is, I have decided, a good day to find the small joys of life.

This morning, I saw Cuppy.

About a year ago I started noticing a man walking the coast road at the same time we drove it in the morning, headed to pre-school, swimming, shopping. He was hard to miss because he was very overweight and he wore remarkably tight shorts. I say 'shorts' but really 'teeny-weeny trunks' is more accurate. His own view of them was likely obscured by what Kathy Lette calls the 'verandah over the toyshop' but every morning I was getting an eyeful of his...how to put this delicately.... his twig and berries? Frank and beans? Meat and potatoes? They were encased in snug cotton and in my own head, I started to call him 'Cuppy.'

Days passed, and Cuppy kept walking. Every day he wore his little trunks. He was obviously on a health kick, and I started to point him out to the kids.

Days turned into weeks, and I began to sing a song about Cuppy when we spotted him. It was set to the classic 80's tune of 'Chuck E's in Love.' The kids would sing along, and when Keith happened to be with us one day he invented the Cuppy Cup, where the first one to spot Cuppy won a prize.

Cuppy's shorts got worn out. He wears a new pair now, but he's still walking, and he's lost a ton of weight. I am so proud of Cuppy, I could cry. But there have been a few too many tears lately. So instead, I give you Cuppy's Song. Months ago, we recorded it for posterity. I've never posted this little video because I try hard in life to create the illusion that I am not a giant nob, and this clip proves otherwise.

But today, today is a good day for Cuppy's song.

Don't Mess With Pirate Teddy.

2011-04-28T20:55:00.003+10:00

I'm off to Sydney tomorrow to spend some time with the family. Leaving behind the K-Dog, Ivy and her ubiquitous 'workbook', and Ted, who's lately taken to carrying a 'pirate handbag'.

I think this is because his only frame of pirate reference is Captain Feathersword, who likes to tickle his acquaintances with a giant pink feather. I think the Wiggles will have a lot of damn explaining to do in future years should Ted's generation of youngsters find themselves on the Somalian high seas.

I'm checking out for a few days.

Happy weekending to you all.

When Stressed: Nest.

2011-04-25T20:26:00.003+10:00

These last few weeks have been tinged with much sadness and worry for our family. Your words of support and kindness on my last post were so touching to me. Especially meaningful because I was holed way up in my lady cave when I wrote, really intending only to explain why our usual wacky tales and pics of everyday life didn't feel true. Unexpected comfort came from my ladies of the interweb. Thanks to all of you.

When something goes wrong, something you cannot fix or help, what can you do...but nest. Clean. Sort. Manage what you can.

I've been emptying boxes, clearing cupboards, washing woolies, and piling an obscenely large crap mountain ready for the op shop. I had great plans for the scary kitchen cupboards too...but was thwarted by the car radiator blowing up. Imagine my joy!

Otherwise, we're OK. Keith, Ted and Ivy are full of beans. Plum backflips with joy every time I administer some medicinal Turkish Delight, but sciatica and hip pain is making me a bit miserable.

In a side-note, my second story for Babble.com is running today. It's all about the wild ride that is life with a three-year-old. If you have time to comment on their site, it's an easy system - no registering or other crap required.

Thanks again, my friends.

Sadness. Sciatica. Sinusitis.

2011-04-21T20:07:00.003+10:00

Times are a little tough right now. Things too private to talk much about in this public space. I will be back to posting soon but in the meantime, love to you all. x

My Bum Is Doing Something.

2011-04-08T10:54:00.006+10:00

Hello, my friends!

We are still here.

Recent good times have included the following.

Bright lights. Big city.

Seaside Festival. A little rest and a bratwurst after viewing local medieval power-metal band Knight Quest. My personal highlight.

Plum is growing.

And Ivy has been practicing some maths in the autumn sunshine.

Is life. Is busy!

A quick report.

Ivy has been taking her cute pills. Four, I tell you, four is the greatest age. The tantrum count is very low. The conversation is fascinating. And the eccentric-o-meter is still spiking off the chart in the best of ways. Ivy can barely fit inside her bed with all the boxes of treasure she must store there. Jars of rocks. Handbags full of coins. Random collections of absurd curios.

We have been reading Little House on The Prairie and she has become obsessed with the notion of butchering a pig (sorry vegans.)

Ted's crazy two-year-oldness is receding, although he is still chucking some mammoth wobblies and waking us a lot at night with lunatic demands. Potty training is not progressing, despite the application of Wiggles underpants and dinosaur shaped wee-treats. Teddy, a constant chatterer, can verbally describe all elements of toileting and yet the practical apsects of the process are beyond him. Sporting his Wiggles underpants while the neighbours were over last weekend, he was heard to comment thoughtfully to himself 'My bum is doing something...' before a foul odour penetrated the gathering.

Unfortunately, a giant bag of hand-me-down toys yesterday contained some hidden bombs that resulted in Ted waving a giant Aussie flag and Ivy sporting pink plastic high heedls and clutching a sequinned Beanie Baby with the heart-warming legend SPOILED! across its plush, sequinned chest. Keith and I have called it Hot Mess. And Hot Mess will be disappeared.

Keith's work is going well, and soccer season has begun, so twice a week he limps painfully into the house before wrapping some part of his body in ice and announcing 'Life is fantastic!'

Plum is gestating away like a champion, rolling and kicking in the little jumping castle constantly. My 20-week scan went fine last week, and I'm feeling great, although still pretty tired. Spending two hours a night on the couch watching cooking programs and docos on IView while ingesting obscene amounts of Turkish Delight seems to be helping me through.

I am feeling very aware of our blessed time in the sun right now, with healthy children, a happy relationship and no significant troubles upon us. Friends and family very dear to us are struggling with sickness and worry. A thousand joys and a thousand sorrows, goes the Korean proverb on life. We are having our thousand joys, and others their sorrows. My heart goes out to them.

Sleepy Bobos

2011-03-26T11:34:00.003+11:00

A story of mine is featuring over at Babble.com today. You can comment there, if you have a moment, to spark the conversation. Thanks guys.

Ted woke us three times last night to talk his midnight crazy talk. We're making big plans to move him and Ivy into a room together in the next few weeks. Good idea? Or crazy like Anne Heche? I'm optimistic it will all go well. (But if you see me at the shops, be kind and ignore the anxious tic...)

Silver Linings

2011-03-23T21:52:00.012+11:00

I've been a little absent from this space. A bit overwhelmed with life, to be honest. Ted is two. I forgot that Two is tough. It's tough on the family and on the two-year-old experiencing all the frustration and pain of conflicting desires for independence and closeness.

When Ted isn't speaking in his hilarious, over-complicated language (this is my bear which is yellow which is my favourite colour which is not Ivy's favourite colour which is green...) he is hugging my neck with desperate passion, or running away at top speed, or crying bitterly in Time Out, or flinging at us his greatest insult: 'You are bum!'

I'm feeling pretty buggered by the intense parenting required to manage an incontinent lunatic, while at the same time helping another human grow a brain-stem, and the urge to whinge is overwhelming. I'm tired and I'm guilty about my pathetic parenting of late; featuring much of the ironic and hopeless technique: STOP SHOUTING, YOU TWO! STOP SHOUTING! STOP SHOUTING!

Instead, I'd rather take a minute to remember the sweet moments. I need reminding. And my lovely friend and beautiful photographer Shirin took some photos on the weekend to help me.

Yesterday the kids invented a carrot orchestra in the back seat on the way to swimming. In the rear-view mirror I watched their matching, intense expressions as they rocked their instruments and I shouted 'Blow, cats! Blow!'
At some point in the day, of late, without fail, Keith says 'Ah, every day, life just gets better, doesn't it?'
Plum has started kicking me. This fills me with joy as I imagine our little mango-sized fella swimming around and I feel that sweet sense of you-and-mama-against-the-world developing.
Ivy has started calling people mud-chickens. We've just figured out she means 'munchkins'.

The end.

Chaos Theory

2011-03-17T17:19:00.001+11:00

This post originally published in Practical Parenting Magazine, December 2010

In a recent burst of creativity, I set up a ‘shop’ in the corner of the lounge room for Peanut and T-Bone. It’s full of scrubbed, empty items from the recycling, and we use it to play wonderfully educational games about counting and shopping manners.

That takes approximately seven minutes. The rest of the day the cereal boxes, egg cartons and milk bottles are strewn all over the house after three-year-old Peanut has used them to build a complicated tower in the bathroom which two-year-old T-Bone then razes violently to the ground.

To recap: seven minutes of educational, creative activity. Twenty three hours and 53 minutes of living in a construction zone. Welcome to the world of a stay-at-home mum.

Every day, I tackle a standard loop of laundry, tidying, bed-making and clutter-management. Then I turn to the shopping, cooking and washing-up tasks related to the endless stream of meals and snacks that are demanded of my short-order kitchen. But the kicker is the random chaos. Tiny people need to be entertained, it turns out, or they cry. So they have blocks, and puzzles, and cars, and play food, all of which contain tiny little pieces that mate and meld together into one giant disordered toy casserole by the end of every day.

The kids make new mess faster than I can clean up the old stuff. On a typical morning, I’ll just move the breakfast dishes out of the way so I can make morning tea. T-Bone will tip over a bucket of hand-washing in the bathroom in a mad haste to get to the window he has suddenly decided to smear with banana. Meanwhile, Peanut takes her bed apart to make it into a spaceship. And so the day rolls on.

T-Bone is part boy, part tornado. He empties drawers, topples washing piles and relieves shelves of their contents with a steady, determined approach. Meanwhile, Peanut’s creative vision is inexhaustible. She is constantly setting up a market stall, making a craft project, constructing an animal theatre or – her absolute favourite - packing for her honeymoon.

At nearly four, she should really be doing more chores, but she’s not interested. ‘Help me do this bed, Peanut,’ I’ll request. ‘Well, the bones in my arms don’t want me to, Mummy,’ she’ll answer. Her expression is always rueful and apologetic. ‘If it was up to me,’ she implies, ‘I would help in a heartbeat! But the bones in my arms… you know how they get.’

It’s true, I could get on top of the mess, if I put in another two hours of hard labour after getting the kids off to bed and having dinner with Keith. But by that stage it’s all I can do to stay awake on the lounge through an entire episode of Ladette to Lady. So the key, I’ve decided, is to embrace the mess and never invite anybody over who would turn up their nose at the state of my bathroom – that’s if they can find it in the chaos.

Is Ivy a Secret Wiccan?

2011-03-17T11:39:00.003+11:00

Things she has stored under her bed recently:

1. The big toenail that fell off Teddy's injured foot.

2. A dead caterpillar stored in a Tupperware container.

3. A small bowl of sea salt.

When Feminist Pride Turns To Feminist Shame

2011-03-14T15:03:00.003+11:00

Ivy: Mum, did you know that in Italy a volcano burst and the fire buried the city and everybody died? I think it was before the dinosaurs and before animals first came out of the water and before fossils.

Me - Wow, you know a lot.

Ivy: Yes. My husband telled me everything.

Goodbye Trixie-Jeff. Don't Let The Door Hit You In The Bum On Your Way Out.

2011-03-02T16:16:00.013+11:00

We're no strangers to multiple personalities in this house. I know who Ivy wants me to play in her daily theatre by the name she calls me. 'Excuse me, Miss Bucket,' she'll say, which means I must say 'Yes, Charlie?' If I'm called Mouldy, she's Milla. If I'm Robbie Rotten, she's Stephanie. Etc, etc.

Teddy is the same age that Ivy began her career in the theatrical arts. At two, she started insisting her name was Hairy Maclary, barking at strangers and addressing baby Ted as Schnitzel Von Krumm.

So far Ted has been pretty happy with the handle we gave him, but about two weeks ago, he started to go Method. One day our easygoing little fella began demanding he was addressed as Trixie. Trixie was a little difficult. But this week Trixie became Trixie-Jeff, and Trixie-Jeff was a shocker. A whingey, demanding, obstreperous diva. No matter the question: more toast, Ted? Ready to go? Need a hand with that? - the answer was the same. No! But I'm Trixie-Jeff! But no! (and once, even: 'No! But I'm Trixie-Jeff! And I dot a fruity poo-bum!')

Last night at dinner, Teddy suddenly made an announcement. 'I Teddy again!' Keith and I erupted in spontaneous applause. There may have been a tear or two. Or three.

Ted is back; our smiley, dancing yes-man. Trixie-Jeff has left the building. We can only pray it's permanent.

Project Monday - Volcanos

2011-02-28T21:11:00.012+11:00

By the end of last week I was a bit of a wreck. Keith caught a terrible death flu-gastro-tonsillitis combo that had him vomiting, feverish, bloodshot and confined to bed. Ted (or Trixie-Jeff, as he now insists on being addressed. Trixie-Jeff, dog save us) came down with a bad case of the night-naughties. Flying visits to Sydney, weekend guests. Many good things along with the bad, but just too many things. The tank ran dry by last night. I felt exhausted.

Today Keith is better and back out to his caravan. I decided to slow things down and get some happy house-time happening. I made it to hydrotherapy to warm the old bones early this morning, and then I put my crafty hat on. Ivy has been talking about volcanoes for a few days and the Internet read my mind and made clever Jean from The Artful Parent post about a volcano-making project she did with her daughter.

So we mixed up some green play-dough, put the gum boots on over the PJs and went on a nature walk with the collecting bags to find some volcano props.

Me, I took my own prop.

We built a leafy dino-land.

Teddy will eat anything.

Then we tried to erupt it. Keith even came out of his van for the big explosion.

Hmmm. Fat failure. Keith went back to the van. But we regrouped, thought like scientists, rebuilt with a smaller, fatter volcano, and:

Success!

The Age of No Reason

2011-02-25T20:29:00.004+11:00

This column was originally published in Practical Parenting Magazine, September, 2010. Apologies for the confusion, I'm out of sync here. Ted has progressed from this brand of craziness, deep into the toddler-zone. This week he will only answer to the name Trixie and answers no to everything. 'More toast, Teddy?' 'No! But I'm Trixie! But no!' He cries if Ivy won't call me Robbie Rotten. Our easygoing, agreeable little fella is breaking bad...

My dear readers, I’m worried about T-Bone. It’s very early to drop such a heavy label on him, but I think he might be an addict. His relationship with condiments has reached unhealthy proportions. He begs for tomato sauce and mayonnaise and he weeps when he can’t get them. ‘Naynays. Soss. Naynays. Soss,’ he moans in a sorrowful, endless chant, and left near an unattended bowl, within seconds he looks like he’s been at the scene of some sort of chainsaw massacre.

If he’s not truly an addict, then it can only mean one thing: he’s reached what I call the Age of No Reason. I’ve been through this before with his big sister Peanut, and it lasted from about eighteen months of age until about three. During this developmental stage, there are no half-measures. Passions are intense, desires must be met immediately, logic has no place at your table and life can be tough for those trying to parent you.

Skills are being learnt at an incredible rate as neural pathways fire at top speed, forming complex and interlocking pathways. There are so many things to learn. So many rules to follow. Cups in the sink, T-Bone, not the toilet. Down from the table! Get off your sister, please. No, T-Bone, knife. Spider! Hot, T-Bone. Don’t touch. Sharp! Sharp! Poo is not for drawing, T-Bone. NOT FOR DRAWING, T-Bone. No! No! No!

At the same time, there is incredible magic too. It’s like watching a personality unfurl like a rosebud. First sentences appear, and early obsessions, and those light bulb mama-moments when you realise ‘Ah! He understands!’ At two, children have one foot in the cuddly, Wondersuited baby camp of gorgeousness, and one foot in the child’s world of imagination and exploration. It’s a beautiful metamorphosis to witness. But it’s also often like living with an incontinent lunatic.

Trying to manage a toddler’s behaviour during the Age of No Reason is nigh on impossible. We tried hard with Peanut, introducing Naughty Corners and Naughty Shelves and Time Outs, but the punishment zones all quickly turned into fun games.

‘Corner?’ Peanut would ask excitedly, knowing she was in for that hilarious gag where Mum and Dad carried her back to the funny spot, over and over again.

Ignoring the tantrum is the only real option, but toddlers don’t make this easy either. Peanut liked to bang her head on the floor in rage when she was going through the Age of No Reason. At one stage I was forced to put her into a fluffy sort of special-needs hat, in an attempt to get her through her toddlerhood with something left of her frontal lobe. If ignored, she would come right up to me and shout indignantly ‘Head! Bang! Head!’

T-Bone takes a more physical approach. If I try and ignore a tantrum, he simply moves the tantrum closer. Yesterday I tried valiantly to continue reading to Peanut while he wailed for tomato sauce. ‘Sauce is finished, T-Bone,’ I insisted, and continued on with Hairy Maclary. T-Bone wasn’t having it. ‘Ignore him, Peanut,’ I gasped, as he wrapped one arm around my neck, locked his legs across my middle and shrieked into my ear.

Just a year-and-a-half to go then, of managing this patience-sapping, brain-melting phase before T-Bone becomes reasonable and allows me to do my best parenting, which involves the judicious application and withdrawal of Milk Arrowroot biscuits and Wiggles videos. Until then, I’ll just keep us well-stocked in tomato sauce and earplugs.

The Last Children In The Lounge-Room

2011-02-23T14:39:00.007+11:00

True confessions: I'm a bit of a mole. Not moll - I almost always put on undies before getting out of a stretch Hummer and I wouldn't text Warnie with a ten-foot pole made of hand sanitizer. But I am an inside lass. A house mouse.

This week we set up a mud pie kitchen, inspired by some of these amazing set-ups.

I was also fascinated last year by Richard Louv and his book The Last Child In The Woods (you can read more and listen to a podcast here.) He talks about modern kids being affected by what he calls Nature Deficit Disorder. We're surrounded by bush and beach so we've got no excuse, like your groovy urban kidlets, but still, we're too often inside, cooking and pottering.

Keith is a lizard, always in search of the sun on his face, so when he gets off work he is always taking the kids off to the beach to explore, and they love it. But within sight of the house, one or both of my little house mice will play for a while and then squirrel back into the house to their books and puzzles.

There are many charms to the inside life, of course. Right now Ivy and Keith are reading together this lovely 1912 copy of Peter Pan. (Ivy is especially gripped by the thrilling gory tales of hand-chopping and crocodiles.)

But I do think we should get out more.

Pregnant Women are Smug

2011-02-21T16:24:00.004+11:00

Via my favourite fellow gestater Sally

1-800-PRGR

2011-02-19T23:03:00.003+11:00

Thanks to Michelle for this workout link. I was thinking yoga...but now I'm torn.

Hippie Fail

2011-02-19T20:55:00.003+11:00

Friends, I have stumbled along the crunchy road to Green Heaven.

Today I bought shampoo and washed my hair.

It felt so good, and yet... so sad.

I haven't used shampoo for nearly six months. Keith hasn't washed his hair with shampoo for a couple of years now, and I've been meaning forever to do the experiment too.

Sodium laurel sulphate, the foaming agent in shampoo, is the work of the devil's chemist. And the argument goes that the oil-stripping-oil-replacing cycle of shampoo and conditioner just ruins the natural method by which your scalp can clean and regulate it's oils.

When you go no-poo, every week , or few days, you scrub your scalp with bicarb soda and then rinse with apple cider vinegar (oh, the glamour.) It's supposed to take up to eight weeks for your hair to regain it's natural mojo. There are a lot of people that argue that after this settling -in period, their hair is softer, cleaner and nicer than before.

But I think my hair is a bad hippie. It's been forever. And I can't wear it out. It just looked feral. It wasn't smelly, or probably that noticeable screwed back in a sort of topknot, but left out, it looked terrible.

I hit the wall today. I'm pregnant, I'm pale, I need a leg wax. At least, I need some good hair, dagnammit.

So I bought shampoo - sulphate free, which makes me happy.

And I washed my hair.

Please don't judge me.

Other People Have Smart Thinkings

2011-02-15T08:41:00.006+11:00

Firstly, thanks to everybody for your blessings on our Plum announcement. I am touched and grateful for your support. It's been quiet around here because I'm still feeling pretty craptacular. Mornings of late I've been hurling in the shower, and generally, all I want to do is lie in bed and read books, lie in the bath and dream about interior decorating, or lie on the couch and watch bad TV.

Hoping to be injected with some energy soon.

In the meantime, I thought I'd link to some bloggers who have been writing thoughtful and interesting stuff while I've been growing tiny toes and eyelashes and watching My Restaurant Rules ( a lame-ass substitute for Masterchef addicts.)

Insightful Tasmanian mum Veronica from Sleepless Nights on Internet privacy (I've been thinking a lot about this.)

Glam and adorable Tori from food blog Eat Tori with the first in her Oscar Food series for the Huffington Post

Sweet smart Min from Lost in Bellambo's on the 'Cinderella Ate My Daughter' syndrome

The very funny Maxabella Loves on getting 3 kids out of the house for school (I'm taking mental notes.)

Happy weekend, my buddies.

Introducing Plum

2011-02-11T19:26:00.003+11:00

Big news, my friends.

Big belly!

I'm twelve weeks peachy with a new Mogantosh. This one we're calling Plum while it cooks.

Plum is due in in August.

So far: morning sickness, shortness of breath, fatigue, headaches...

...and extreme whinging.

But happy!

So, so happy.

Come Back, Dr Freud, All Is Forgiven

2011-02-06T21:01:00.005+11:00

The heatwave broke today. Actually, it's been pretty fun, with lots of water fights and icy-poles and cold showers and trips to the pool and frosty watermelon.

I'm feeling better, and Keith has had a great first week as head honcho of Lone Wolf Enterprises. Ivy, too, has been so well behaved. It's because she's obsessed with Charlie and The Chocolate Factory and will only answer when addressed as 'Charlie Bucket.' She calls me 'Miss Bucket' and Keith 'Grandpa Joe.' Because Charlie is the 'good boy', and Ivy is totally Method, as long as I remain in character as Miss Bucket, she is obedient and sweetly-spoken. But as soon as she forgets she's being Charlie, she throws a dramatic wobbly because her Band-Aid fell off or a dog looked at her funny.

Tonight at dinner we had a long chat to Charlie (who has decided to live at our house for five days) about his friend Ivy. Ivy is good some of the time, Charlie says, but naughty a lot. Ivy likes Star Wars, Charlie said, and when they play Star Wars together, Charlie is always Princess Leia and Ivy is always Luke Skywalker.

Confused? Welcome to the psychedelic wonderland of Ivy's head.

Ted, meanwhile is still refusing to get his head around the potty thing and has taken to wandering the house wagging his finger and chanting 'Bibbity bobbety boo. Never do a poo.'

Paging Dr Freud?

Road Trip

2011-02-06T20:52:00.002+11:00

Back to all the words. This blog is where I keep track of stories as they are published, so apologies if you're tired of all the wacky. This piece was written for the Summer issue of Early Years Magazine. And p.s:- Tania, is this your wee-bath story? I wrote this column a while ago, and I can't remember, but it made me laugh for days. And now it is immortal.

Close your eyes, readers. Come with me on a little trip back in time. A faraway time, deep in your distant past. A time BC: before children. And now, in that misty memory, imagine you are taking a road trip. The guitar is there, the chocolate, the bottle of port, the crossword. Thick books and driving CD’s are piled high. Ribbons of coast road unravel before you as you cruise along, minds blissfully empty, needing only to stop at an occasional farm-shop for eggs and honey, or a country café for a leisurely latte.

Wake up, parents! Those days are over. Wake up now! Wake up with a shock, like a person with kids. Wake up like my friend who recently relaxed into a warm bath to have a potty full of wee poured over her head.

Once upon a time, in our lazy, hazy pre-baby years, Keith and I would borrow my parent’s campervan as often as we could convince them to lend it. We’d load up, take off up the highway and shed our worries as we camped in various National Parks across New South Wales.

Some years later, life has changed. I’m preparing for a seven hour drive with our two kids in tow, and the packing is a whole different kettle of fish fingers. The CD’s are less of your indie-folk genre, and more of your Hooley Dooley’s (and you know you’re listening to too much children’s music when you and your partner are singing along to ‘I’m A Slug’, and agreeing ‘you know, they’re really very talented.’)

Road snacks don’t include chocolate peanuts or ginger beer. Snacks, these days, are boxes of dried fruit, cheese and crackers, sliced apples; carefully prepped for excitement of eating and separated into containers to give maximum time and interest. There are emergency wafers and caramels for the inevitable moments of madness. Surprise toys. Mapped-out stops at parks for running races, Duck, Duck, Goose, and other desperate attempts to tire out the tiny travellers.

I’m working hopeful, this trip, with a fully stocked Fun Bag. It took me hours and it contains a range of fiddly activities, intended to keep us twenty minutes ahead of the meltdown curve. We travel with a Rewards Chart complete with fairy stamp. We have lolly snakes for every hour of happy behaviour. We have a Dictaphone for Ivy to record and play back her own stories on. Trading on the vanity of the pre-schooler, we have little photo books featuring Ivy and Ted engaged in different activities, so they can gaze lovingly at themselves for a very long time. I know it sounds like the work of an obsessive mother, perhaps one in need of anxiety medication, but really, it’s just what I’ve been driven to after three years of listening to Ivy lose it, loudly and theatrically, in the car. Once she spent ten minutes on the freeway straining desperately against her car-seat and shouting ‘Undo me! I can’t undo me! But I have to get ooooooouuuuut!’

In the end, we make it, without having had any meltdowns. It’s been OK. At times, it’s even been fun. But it’s taken hours of preparation and a constant vigilance on the mood of the back seat to get us there in that state. And yet, somehow, for the last few hours, Keith and I indulged in a dreamy conversation about taking a year out to drive the whole family around the country. I’m sure that would turn out OK too, but I may rethink the anxiety medication in that Fun Bag.

In Which I Shut Up And Ivy Makes The Dinner.

2011-02-04T21:17:00.010+11:00

In December, I dropped and broke our camera and I haven't yet replaced it. Funds are low but I'm looking for a digital camera with video that has some sort of fun tinkery aspect rather than a straight point and shoot. Maybe second-hand. Any advice gratefully received.

Any the how, our summer has gone largely unrecorded and this blog has gotten very wordy. I'm sick of myself. My, kids say the darndest things. Haven't done the washing-up. Ooh my pants fell down! Etc.

So as a little relief, here is a small series of Ivy making dinner in early summer.

Start with your little tomatoes. Eat a few, arrange a few...

Drizzle. For shizzle.

Season.

Grating cheese is totally exciting!

Still, sometimes it ends with Band-Aids (the chef's badge o'glory.)

Mix up a few Ribena mocktails.

And dinner is served!

This last photo really makes me laugh. For ages we were all perched around the kids table while the dining table held up some work-in-progress in the corner. Now it's back - no photos, so I can't prove it - but we're sitting around a big persons table like proper grown-ups.

Happy weekend, everybody.

My Imaginary Children

2011-02-03T11:23:00.002+11:00

This post originally appeared in Practical Parenting Magazine, November 2010

Sometimes, I am faced with a certain parental schizophrenia, although I haven’t yet required medication, or constructed myself a foil hat with flaps that channel messages from the Sunrise team. I do occasionally talk back to the Wiggles, but that’s just when I’ve been forced to watch too many DVDs and feel compelled to offer advice. ‘Your pants are too tight, Anthony! Too tight! And tell Murray to back away from the L’Oreal Copper Collection!’

No, my mental disconnect is the furry line between reality and fantasy which delineates my imaginary children from my real ones. It happens across a few aspects of life. Take dinnertime, for instance. My imaginary children eat whatever I put in front of them. They say ‘Brown rice and broccoli! Woo-hoo! Thanks for optimising our future dental health and academic success through a balanced diet, Mum!’

In real life, T-Bone will eat anything but by ‘eat’, I mean convey food to his mouth after taking each forkful on a journey across his outfit, the table and his sister. At two, he is barely stringing words together, but when I put spaghetti bolognaise down in front of him last week, he still managed to shout ‘Dog food, Mama!’

Three-year-old Peanut, meanwhile, says, as a reflex: ‘I don’t like that,’ whenever dinner is placed in front of her. An average mealtime might involve three visits to time-out, four threats to withhold dessert and six months off my life-span. When forced to chew, she can make one mouthful last longer than the Middle East peace negotiations, and if allowed, she would exist solely on frozen blueberries, sausages, and the thrill of drama.

In my head, my kids dress in organic cotton, hand-made, fair-trade garments, woven on the earnest hips of a female collective from a developing nation. Logo-free, calming neutrals, they would be worn with just a touch of whimsy. A bespectacled owl badge, perhaps.

In real life, Peanut’s all-time favourite outfit goes like this: Sportacus underpants worn beneath a pair of satin Wiggles boxer shorts and a Thomas the Tank Engine singlet topped with a stretched-out, over-loved blue top that reads ‘Bring Back Warney’. She likes to top this ensemble with a pair of sunglasses I made for her third birthday that feature two Wiggles stuck on straws and leaping, maniacally and permanently, off the side of her head. T-Bone fights Peanut for the Wiggles shorts, but he prefers to wear them as a hat. Lately, he has developed a passion for a striped sun frock that he calls his ‘dancing dress.’

I can’t really blame the kids. To be honest, I am a different mother in my imagination too. There, I never withdraw to a quiet place in my own head where the whinging can’t reach. The television doesn’t function as a fat, square, twinkly babysitter. I use only cloth nappies, feed only organic and I am fully Present in the Moment.

Then again, maybe, my imaginary mother-self is a bit much. I would probably avoid her at the park. And those imaginary kids…, well,the other children would probably hang them up on a basketball hoop by the strap of their home-sewn underpants. Perhaps, in the end, reality ain’t so bad.

Steaming Slowly

2011-01-31T17:55:00.004+11:00

First day of New System over, and all seemed to go well, although we've been slammed with a filthy heatwave, and Keith spends his working day inside a derelict caravan on the driveway. He's sitting in a little tin sauna. But at least we can ferry him out the occasional mercy icy-pole.

I think life will be good. Different good. For instance last week I left a joke message on Keith's work voicemail in a Kath and Kim accent, offering to give his latex underpants a press before our partner yoga-lates class. All standard nobby spouse-comedy, except that the waitress in my favourite cafe overheard me and gave a brief look of pity mixed with revulsion before she quickly re-arranged her features into a default bored, disdainful mode.

That won't happen any more at least.

The kids and I sweltered today. No air-con at the ranch. We ate watermelon and icy-poles, they jumped in and out of a cold bath, and we played a game on the deck we called 'Hello, Tippo' where we threw buckets of water on each other.

Later we had a cooking session where they helped to construct chicken schnitzel for dinner. But I'm out of hot-weather ideas. If anybody has some good gags, I'd love to hear them. The temps are going to be super-high all week.

I reversed the car into a pole at the library. Teddy is failing at potty school, big time.

And that's about it.

Doctor In The House.

2011-01-30T20:50:00.005+11:00

After six years of commuting to Canberra every week for work, Keith has left his job at the university and is striking out on his own. I was nervous at first but he assured me that there is a living to be made in writing erotic historical romance.

Just kidding.

That's just his hobby.

No, he's striking out on his own. It's Lone Wolf Enterprises time. So if anybody needs a consultant in the field of characterisation and simulation of photovoltaic solar cells and modules, I can totally hook you up. His last day at the ANU was Friday, so as of Monday, the K-Dog trots out to his caravan a free man, with only the responsibilities of keeping his small family in cheese and blueberries resting on his handsome, nerdy shoulders.

It's going to be amazing having him home for dinner every night and and not tootling off for two or three days at a time. But I am a little worried. For six years I've had time on my couch every week to lie around and watch Eataholics without an audience. Minor adjustments to come, I'm sure.

Hot Doggerol!

2011-01-27T11:21:00.002+11:00

Hi fellas,

I've been slack and unposty in blogland of late. Many things are afoot. I'm hoping to get back into the swing really soon.

In the meantime, a little gift for you:

My friend Shelly has taken to writing poetry lately. It's sort of like literary crack for sarcastic-atheist-skeptic types.

She is too smart and funny for words. Enjoy!

Happy Thursday to you all.

Puppy Dog Tails

2011-01-24T22:10:00.002+11:00

This piece originally appeared in the January 2010 issue of Practical Parenting Magazine.

Last week, one of Keith’s work colleagues said warmly ‘Tell me about little Peanut. Is she three? I bet it’s a pink and frilly Princess-land at your place.’ Not so much, Keith replied, as he tried to explain his daughter’s interests in blood, bones, death and dinosaurs. ‘Maybe she’ll be an anatomist,’ his colleague suggested. ‘Yes,’ said Keith. ‘Or a sociopath.’

When dress-up day at pre-school arrived, I suggested that Peanut dress up as a cat, but she had other ideas. ‘I’m the Black Ghost, Mummy,’ she cried. ‘The Ghost who might kill everybody in the whole world!’ I let the Black Ghost go to school, but as I watched the other animals, fairies and superheroes file in, I felt nervous and hoped that she’d keep her plans for mass murder to herself.

I admit that I’ve never been a very pink-sprinkly-cupcakes kind of mother, but I still don’t know where this tiny emo of ours came from. Family chat around the dinner table doesn’t tend to cover cremation or haemorrhage or surgery. I don’t put Peanut to sleep reading passages from the Tibetan Book of the Dead. She and two-year-old T-Bone watch Play School, not Invasion of the Body Snatchers, I promise. Peanut has always been the most independent of daughters and her Gothic leanings – like the invention of the Black Ghost, and her fascination with skulls - are her very own.

Plus, she’s three, and so all of her ideas have a slightly surreal, absurd bent to them. ‘Don’t eat hot poo, Mummy,’ she told me recently, in passing conversation. ‘It will deaden you.’ To what, I wondered? Contemporary social mores? Gourmet taste sensations? ‘You would die,’ she insisted, and two-year old T-Bone, her faithful sidekick agreed. ‘Hot poo! Die!’ he affirmed.

Lately, however, it’s all about dinosaurs. Peanut keeps a green clothes-peg marking her favourite page of the dinosaur book, where a Tyrannosaurus Rex is brutally slaying a Stegosaurus. Blood, bones and gore abound, but she can stare happily at this page for hours, re-enact it, and discuss it at length. ‘Let’s talks about the T-Rex, Mama,’ she likes to suggest. ‘He’s a meat-eater.’ Peanut combines this macabre interest with a naturally dramatic personality, so now every time she stubs a toe or squishes a finger, she moans ‘Oh no, I feel like I died!’

Often I try and understand what’s going on inside her little gothic brain, but it’s not always clear, especially when T-Bone joins the conversation. Playing Doctors last week, I called for my next patient. ‘What’s the problem, Miss?’ I asked. ‘A T-Rex bit my leg off,’ Peanut told me. ‘How does it feel?’ I asked. Predictably, Peanut replied ‘Like I died.’ I sensed a Teachable Moment. ‘How old are people when they die, Peanut?’ I asked. ‘A hundred,’ she relied knowledgably. ‘And what kinds of things can you die from?’ I asked, but Teddy knew that one, and he leapt in before she could answer. ‘Hot poo, Mama!’ he shouted with delight. ‘Hot poo!’ I give up. Mark another win up to the Black Ghost.

Adventures in Toilet Training #227

2011-01-21T08:38:00.001+11:00

Me (hopelessly): 'Teddy, what is your nappy supposed to catch?'

Ted (hopefully): 'Fish?"

Well, I Feel Better After This Rant. I Hope You Guys Are Doing OK Out There.

2011-01-15T22:19:00.002+11:00

Life has been tough all over, it seems. My small stresses here at Ranch Mogantosh have been paling in comparison to the heartbreak suffered by those swirling in our orbit, who have lost lives or livelihoods in the floods, buried husbands or are supporting children through cancer.

I send all my best wishes to any of you suffering hard times right now.

Maybe it's a good time to offer a little cheer-up to all my buddies out there. Some of you will know that I write a monthly column for Practical Parenting Magazine. They posted this recent column on their website, and when I checked it out, I found 32 comments - some positive - but a goodly number absolutely CANING my parenting style, my writing style and everything that I stand for.

At first it was a little disconcerting, but soon I realised that the shriekers were largely nutty - and not in the fun way. In fact they were the brand of humourless humans I try my best to avoid. Soon I found it very funny, and I hope you do too.

I present you with:

The Best Of The Angry Shriekers That Hate Me.

1. Well, it just goes to show how many ridiculous people are out there posing as parents! Doesn't this woman realize that she has just made things worse for herself by giving in to her child? It's time some parents understood that you have to learn to say 'NO"! to your children. Before I took my three children shopping I made it very clear that they were not to ask for anything because not only could I not afford it, but they had to learn that they can't have it!

Well, shame she forgot to get to her irony lessons. But gosh, she sounds super fun to have a coffee with.

2. What a joke! 1. These stories are fantasy creations by the author. 2. Kids are NOT evil and if these stories were real, it was only from bad parenting. Kids need boundaries people! 3. The final story about the balloon: Yeah good one, reward the kid with a balloon for unacceptable behaviour. Reinforce the bad behaviour. The answer is in the story. And people listen to this?

Damn, observational domestic comedy wasted on this reader. And um..who said kids are evil? I think that was a voice in your head, weird internet shrieker. Not to judge you or anything.

3.No, I did not find any of the twaddle this woman wrote funny.

Brief and pithy. This writers name is Rodney. Somehow I imagine Rodney with a handlebar moustache and a safari suit, under which he is wearing lacy womens underpants.

4. Do any of these articles actually get approved or can any monkey write an article and expect us to take it as gospel.

Gosh, you should totally write one! I bet it would be lighthearted. But not as good as if an actual monkey wrote an actual gospel.

5. I honestly can't take anyone seriously who would call their children T-bone and Peanut. You're just asking them to be bullied. Also, I completely disagree with rewarding a child when they're doing the wrong thing. Far from helpful, I must admit the article was entertaining.

This is my absolute favourite. In these bacchanalian and godless times, I I love a reader who has led such a sheltered life that she's never come across a pseudonym. I only hope that she thinks the newspaper letters to the editor are really written by Disgrunted From South Melbourne.

Thank You

2011-01-05T22:29:00.004+11:00

Today I'm feeling grateful.

Grateful for good friends who take the kids under their warm and affectionate wings, feeding and cuddling them so I can rest.

Grateful for doctor buddies who are always on the other end of the phone if I find myself weeping in a car park.

Grateful for blogging friends who send kindness and support across the intertubes.

Grateful for codeine.

Grateful for a Mum and Dad who'll travel the countryside in their camper-van visiting daughters in need.

And above all, grateful for partners like Keith who pick up all the balls I drop on a week like this last one; taking over all the late-night kidwork, the cooking, the washing, the clutter-bombs, the squabble-wrangling; and bringing cups of tea, raisin toast and reassurance that everything will be OK.

Thanks, everybody.

They Shoot Horses, Don't They? Oh and Happy New Year.

2011-01-02T20:55:00.010+11:00

I've been neglecting this little blob. And also the washing-up, the laundry, the craft table, the menu-plan... Christmas has come and gone in a blurry round of parties and visitors and road trips, and with Keith on holiday, and all the kiddo activities on hold, we're out of the normal flow of things. Which should be really nice.

But is not.

Something has gone awol in my back. It feels, I could swear, like a small horse with a hard, pointy hoof KICKED me a good one right in the middle of my spine. I'm pretty sure this didn't happen. But whatever muscle is doing a spastic jig has sent me under, into the whingey, frowny, land of pain and hot baths and painkillers, and because of my dark past, into the Bad Place where my brain whispers 'This is it! The big one! The one where you have to recalibrate life so that you never have to pick anything up or bend over or carry small people! The alternative future that SUCKS!'

And when you live with delicious naughtiness like this:

the main requirement is ENERGY. Why is Teddy wearing undies on his head? Why is Ivy constructing a tower of hats? Why did this game require that all the clothes leave the cupboard for the floor? I can't even flip this photo sideways. Could you just turn your head to the side? and while you're at it, fold my washing?

Yesterday, I hit the wall and hit the painkillers. Today, I feel a little better and can sense a return to a normal persons feeling of general impending doom, rather than the imminent collapse of the fabric of my world. In the spirit of the old saying: Why hit yourself on the head with a hammer? Because it feels so damn good when it's over... I embrace the onset of 2011 with the fervent hope that it will be less painful than yesterday, and contain no phantom horse assaults.

And you, my inter-webby buddies, I wish for you the same blessed future.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Naughtybuttons

2010-12-17T10:36:00.009+11:00

Last week, we were talking about Christmas and it suddenly occured to me that I may have been neglecting a corner of Ivy's education about life.

'Have you heard of Jesus, Ivy?' I said.

'Genies?' she asked excitedly.

'No, Jesus,' I said. 'Little baby Jesus?'

'No,' she replied. 'Who's that?'

'Well, some people think he's excellent,' I said. 'They think he's the son of God and he was born at Christmas, so they celebrate.'

She was silent for a few minutes.

Is he like a genie?'

'No,' I said. 'He's a religous leader of great meaning to millions of Christian people.'

She mulled this over for a while.

'But can you tell me about genies, Mum?'

'Well, they live in tea-pots and if you rub the teapot they come out and grant you three wishes,' I said. Ivy's face took on the familiar fervour of passion. It was like Thomas, the Wiggles and the Jurrasic period were all delivered to her on a giant blueberry.

'Here are my grant-wishes, Mum', she said. 'A walking apple, a baby made just for kids, and a pineapple pie.'

Ever since, Ivy has refined and elaborated on her grant-wishes. I thought I'd explained that genies live in the land of imagination, but I forgot that the line between magic and reality for the four-year old is tissue-thin. Last night, she begged Keith to talk about genies, and so he wove a tale about an old, dusty teapot in the back of the cupboard.

This morning, Ivy jumped into the big bed. 'I know my grant-wishes, Mum!' she shouted. 'I want a yellow sewing machine made for four-year-old and five-year-olds, a real baby for me to play with and all the dinosaurs as a pet!'

Then she hounded me out of bed and made me search for tea-pots in the cupboard. I found two, and we sat on the floor and rubbed the first one. 'Genie, genie, talk to me,' I droned. 'Grant me wishes: one, two, three!' Ivy threw open the lid and looked inside. 'Not today,' I said.

Teddy did the next one. 'Genie, genie, what you do, wake up!' he sang. Ivy looked inside that lid too, desperately, and even checked the spout for a curl of dusty smoke, and then her little heart broke.

'Oh no!' she wailed as she threw herself on the rug and cried with the painful realisation that no pet dinos or babies were forthcoming. 'Ivy-cakes, genies aren't real,' I said. 'They just live in books and in games. But they are still wonderful.'

Two honey crumpets and a game of Snap later, she'd recovered.

Ah; four. I love it.

Oh Hello

2010-12-13T22:33:00.004+11:00

My friend Lisa sent me this link today. I like. If I may explain myself briefly:

a. My camera is busted, and I'm slowly, surely losing the habit of recording small moments in daily life. Then I'm not reminded to write about them either. I miss it; especially since the weather has been so delightful lately, inspiring Ivy and Ted to constantly get their gear off and play the game they call Hug-Running (a game I'd like to offer as a potential key exercise in Middle East peace negotiations. )

c. Keith is still computer-less, so I don't have free access to Miz Scarlett the laptop.

b. Right now the feeding, cuddling and picking up after my little friends is taking all my available space. Life needs me for living, so I'll have to put off the record-keeping for a little bit. For instance Ivy told me her wish-list today: a walking apple, a baby made just for kids to play with and a pineapple pie. She found a dead caterpillar this morning, put it in a Tupperware container, called it I Love You and took it to bed. Teddy The Bear, meanwhile, is developing a comedic sensibility. This week he said to the fridge 'Knock knock. Who there. Dinner!'and every night he makes the same joke at the table: Ébby-body eat poo-bum!' Champagne comedy. I am so very proud.

I send you kisses and I urge you to add some Hug-Running to your life.

Alive and Kicking Limply

2010-12-07T19:47:00.007+11:00

Fellas, I'm sorry I've been so silent. I don't have time to gather my thoughts right now. I hope you are all well, but I'm in the land of overwhelm this week. I'll recap Nerd-Vember for you later, but for now, it's a distant memory of a sweet, forgotten past.

Keith has gone back to work with a bang. The first week back he was gone for four days, taking my computer with him - his stupid one was busted and his pesky breadwinner status took precedence over my social networking and blog-whining.

So there I was with no husband, unending days of monsoonal rain, no radio (I can only pick up a good signal by Internet streaming), no DVD player to soothe the little monsters, I mean darlings, and none of the little mini-moments I take throughout the day to balance out what can be a crazy-making lifestyle of clutter-management and ruthless behaviour-modification-training, I mean calm and relaxed parenting.

See, even my sentences are overwrought.

I have spent this week losing my shizzle in small ways. When I packed the swimming-lesson bag last week I forgot the small but critical elements of a bra and undies for me to wear once I took off my wet cozzie. I had to put on my jeans and a light, clingy sweater with nothing underneath, and go and do the food shopping. I was flying free as a bird and it was pouring with rain. Let's just say that the small number of men who found themselves in the largely female land of Bi-Lo on a Weekday lunchtime got an unexpectedly graphic little show in the melon section.

I'm tired. I'm trying to keep organised and on top of the Christmas planning, making, shopping and list-refining. I'm hopelessly drowning in clutter as I try to simultaneously redecorate Ivy;s room, pack and sort the winter clothes, cull the toys and sew Christmas presents.

PS - A word of advice. If you have a t-shirt that reads 'always be reading something that will make you look good in case you die in the middle of it', think before throwing it on, because one of your friends will ask you and you will be forced to admit that currently you are revisiting Jackie Collins seminal work 'The Stud.'**

PPS - we have nits.

PPPS - First world problems, all. I know.

*Sorry

** Sorry

Naughty Buttons. You Is Driving Me Mental.

2010-11-27T21:03:00.006+11:00

The end of Nerd-Vember is almost upon us. I may cry. Can I tell you, fellas, that the secret to life with two small children is that neither one of you has a job to go to, or friends, or commitments outside the home. You can spend all day tending to the offspring, painting walls, languishing in the bath, cooking, writing novels. It is perfect.

But more on that later.

Right now, I must unload that amongst all this feckless indolence, there is the small matter of the tiny wildebeest Ivy driving me insane.

In the membrane.

INSANE IN THE BRAIN.