We’re Back!

It’s been a few months but we are back in action! Baby has now turned one! I’m sure we’ll have an action packed year ahead and looking forward to sharing with everyone along the way. 

 

Thanks for hanging around!

 

Zoe

ha ba ba ba

There is a certain little girl on the loose who has just figured out that she can move her mouth and make noises come out. Intentional noises too, not just the involuntary squeaks and squeals that come out when she is excited. Lily has spent all day for the last few days traveling around the house on her human transportation ride (aka Mummy) opening and closing her mouth like a fish going, ha bap bap bap.

If you too have been secretly sitting her in the bath sining Mummy, Mummy, Mummy, hoping to win the ‘whose name will she say first’ bet with your partner, then you’ll understand my predicament. When baby is talking, when does it count? She already says “mum” every now and again but when does she say it knowing what it means?

Of course since in this case we are talking about the word “mum”, Daddy has taken the stance that it doesn’t count and as expected I am convinced it does in fact count AND it means she is the smartest baby in the world. Obviously. So when do you get the the point where you write in the baby book what her first words are?

I guess we will have to wait and see. TBC….

Huckleberry to Giraffe

Our newest addition to the Fisher Price Rainforest family was swept in with Kmart sale. He’s the Rainstick Giraffe and a bundle of fun.

Teething head, rattly body, gangly colourful legs, easy to grip he’s got is all. What more could a baby want?

Now that we can sit in a high chair, a new naming process takes place. Mummy and Daddy pick names out of the air until baby flaps her arms around in agreement.

With the power invested in me as the mother of the baby who decides, and the state of New South Wales, and the spirit of Mr Fisher Price himself, i declare you Huckleberry.

Life with Leonard

It was love at first sight when a multicolored dinosaur entered our baby’s life. He was crinkly and squishy, noisy and tasty. Everything a 3 month old wants.

It was a summery day in mid November when “spike” the Lamaze dinosaur first swept into our lives. Having been stored in the cupboard with all the rest of our baby gifts for some months he made his first appearance in one of the most trying times, a ‘crap, lets hope this one works then’ whim if you will. We hooked him up to the top of the bouncer and the crying stopped. A little hand reached out for those ever so bright and textured rings and never let go. “Spike” was now part of the family.

Then came the grueling naming process, Lily had the deciding vote, always dangerous when left with the only person in the room who doesn’t know where her nose is. The system was intricate and lengthy; I keep saying names until Lily sticks out her tongue as a sign that she has choosen what will remain.

Brian, Simon, Jerry, Leo… Ok we had a spit bubble… Leonard? TONGUE! We use a drool covered hand to knight Leonard by rhythmically grabbing his noisy feet and then chewing on his tail. A historical ceremony passed down through generations on infant namers.

Although adults have questioned Leonards sexuality, with his brightly coloured demeanor and purple tendencies, this fuzzy green friend formally known as Spike, has stepped up in society, travelling far and wide, meeting new people… The new Leonard recognises that he is a vast improvement on his former, run-of-the-mill, one of a million self. His tail might be a little soggier but he is now wise beyond his years. Behind those wired looking eyes there is a soul.

So this holiday season, the first toast of many to come, heres to you Leonard.

Catch Up Time

You can only leave everything for so long before it starts to pile up so high you have trouble getting in the door. This stands for laundry, bills, recycling, general crap, or whatever else you have been putting off time and time again. One day it will catch up with you and for me, today is the day.

What does this mean for those around me? It means that as most new mums do, I am going to over react, and instead of just taking care of the things i need to, decide to rearrange everything until my house looks different to the one I have now. While I am on the road for predictions, let me add that at about 1/4 of the way through I will sit down and realise I really didn’t have the time or energy for this while trying to get the baby to go to sleep. I’ll sit down, watch the end of the news until the Simpsons come on (that’s enough to get me away from the tv) then grab something to eat and stand in the kitchen consuming it, looking at the mess I have created.

Then, after my second burst of energy, thanks to that mars bar, I’ll decide to get out the measuring tape and figure it all out correctly. Of course this now means I will need to move litereally everything to make it all fit. Turns out there was an explanation why it was this way to begin with. For some reason I measure my waist while I am at it and I’m distressed. I sweep a small space on the floor to make myself feel better. That had to be at least 100 calories burnt right?

By the way, at this point, all the laundry, bills and crap is still sitting in a whole other room, untouched since I began.

I begin moving things around again, this time realising I can not do it alone. Angered by both the premise than I can not do it alone as well as the actuality of knowing I can not have it finished before my husband wakes up, I go to the kitchen.

Why didn’t I get two mars bars?.. I definitely need another one.

While looking in the fridge to see if I have all the ingredients to make some christmas cookies, I notice the pile of dishes in the sink, the size of my ass in the window reflection, and then the three rooms full of furniture where I have moved everything into the centre and then, left it. Eyes on the prize! I am going back into the living room war zone

Put the baby back to sleep again and then I am in chucking mode. Anything that doesn’t fit, gets thrown away. My husband doesn’t realise it but between my state of mind and the baby behaving like she is a three month old or something, this is a dangerous time for him to emerge from the bedroom.

Ok, a few things done and ready to go for when husband gets up. I draw a diagram on some paper that is so detailed I have included little people and pictures on the tv screen. When Josh gets up I will just how him what I want and then we’ll be fine. The dog is afraid of me and just praying to the dog-food gods that her bed doesn’t get relocated.. again. I make no guarantees.

I discover I am running out of time to get this finished or even close to started, so i decide to sit down and write a blog post about it. Maybe I should take up tennis. No that is not related, just something I am throwing out there.

As you can see, this is no longer prediction and is actually the story of this mum’s Saturday afternoon.. (sings in head) “Saturday night at the movies… ” I’m easily side tracked.

How will this tale end? Will the furniture fit in a new way or end up back in the old way? Will Josh be horrified to see what I have started or motivated to keep going with me? Will the baby (who IS three months by the way) ever go to sleep? Or will those bills and laundry, the things that started it all.. ever get paid and finished?

Who can say.

To Be Continued. Elf is coming on.

Casino Baby

There are few things that you can do when you become a parent to escape your new found sense of adult responsibility and sensibility. In fact, having the balls to step outside your new comfort zone for fear of being seen or judged is mostly the problem.. even when there is nothing to be judged for. In an extreme moment of recklessness like chewing some gum resulting in a ‘chewing noise’ who would know you were a mother and expected to be more refined? We don’t have it tattooed on ourselves anywhere yet, we have this notion that the world expects better of us. Why should we strip ourselves of all the fun?

It was last Saturday that we had my birthday ‘day of fun’. Technically my birthday was on the Tuesday but in the interest of not spending it doing dishes, laundry and dreaming of a shower, it was in part, moved to a more suitable day. It was all very unknown, whats going to happen, where are we going… my husband had his secrets. First up, Fun Day at the local primary school awesome. Although we didn’t realize that no one would have change for a fifty so we only got to have one spin of the chocolate wheel and a good look around. It was fun, and probably for the best because lets face it, my chances of bring back the fruits of fifty attempts at the $1 lucky dip where pretty high. Then we went again, this time to my mother’s where we dropped off Lily and then headed for the city.

Josh turns to me and says, “I tried to think of the most non motherly thing to do for your birthday” and then, we turned into the StarCity Casino. Now I am not a gambler, in fact despite my 10 odd trips to Las Vegas, I have only played a poker machine once in New Zealand and I won $200.00. I have never felt confident enough to push my luck again. But, here we were. Up the elevator and in we go.

Like any classically thrifty new mother, I used the first 10 or 15 minutes spending three dollars on a 1 cent pokie. Then walked away from them very proud of myself having won back my three dollars. Simple pleasures. Josh says it is time to step it up a notch and we head to the roulette tables and screens, yes I mean screens. We play rapid roulette which gives you your own screen to play on and then watch the wheel in the middle. This is perfect for someone like me who is convinced that everyone is starring at her thinking “but you just had a baby” and having small anxiety attacks at each hand.

At the risk of falling even further into the stereotyped new-mum-in-the-casino role, I take the opportunity to bet my money on my daughters birthday, 29, as well as the numbers surrounding. Only in small quantities of course since parting with money these days is like trying to take the taco left-overs out of my dogs bowl after she started eating it. For those of you who don’t know my dog, the reference implies this is not an easy task. She isn’t a miniature poodle or anything. The name of my game is betting on my baby with minimum bet limits over and over again. It was fantastic fun and she won all our money back in the end.

To complete this Mummy-does-gambling story book, I insisted that we leave having won our money back because had we stayed another half hour and lost it all again, I would have regretted it. Once the sensible parent in you has been activated it takes 18 – 20 years to wear off, there is nothing you can do to speed up that process. From what I can see you can only shake it off in time for a belated mid life crisis and spending spree retirement.

With my gambling for the day over, all I needed now was a cigarette, a drink, a few pills and I’d be a very bad mummy. I only got one of those, I will leave it to you to guess which.

Basically it is ok to go out and have some fun once in a while, spin the roulette wheel and see what happens because as long as your betting on your baby’s birthday, it’s allowed.

Career Mum?

So tomorrow Lily will be 10 weeks old, and I will also be going back to work. I’m sure it will be one of the hardest days of my life and I am dreading it with all my might. I have so many concerns.. I’ll miss her and her now ever-present Fisher -Price accompanying music. I won’t be able to be with her all day. And most importantly, where will I get my cold iced tea from without my close-by refrigerator? Although since I don’t drink the feral diet kind, that could be for the best.

Like every other Mum out there, quite simply, I don’t want to leave my little baby. But, work calls, or better put, money calls and maternity leave doesn’t last forever.. unless you’re Brittany Spears with consecutive pregnancies. I have spent the last ten weeks of my life learning her moves and sounds.. We have a routine down pat and it’s been working very well for us. That being said, I admit she must know that I am going back to work this week because she has chosen these particular few days to change a few things on me. For example, our usual “Poo Days” are twice on Wednesday and once on Sunday.. this has been the way for weeks now and I am told by Dr’s and midwives that as long as your baby has a routine of some sort, most things are normal, especially with breast milk. This last week we had our regular two on Wednesday and 3 unauthorized poos on Thursday, Friday was bust, then two on both Saturday and Sunday. Very uncool. Her sleeping and eating pattern has changed as well, making me less and less comfortable with leaving her. But these are the things we don’t have a choice in. You can’t live close to a big city and own a home in this world anymore without two working parents and shares in Fisher-Price.

I am nervous since I don’t speak either business or english very well now, I do however speak baby grunt and baby body noises fluently. If only that could become an adequate tool of trade. My skill set has diminished from balancing management with the ins and outs of my industry to the finer points of assembling baby swings & nursery accessories and the how to’s of pumping. My daily intake has changed from the office on-the-go types of foods that either come in your handbag or through the car window, to home made sandwiches, fruit, carrot sticks and iced tea on tap. I don’t know that I can comfortably make the switch to a fruit bar and a McDonald’s Diet Coke without some protest. We’ll see.

I will miss my baby girl and something tells me that holding a photo of her while I pump breatmilk tomorrow in the bathroom of my office (like it suggests on the back of the pump box for “Working Mum’s”), just ain’t gonna cut it.

It’s strange, tomorrow I will be back at work, Lily will be ten weeks old, but it will feel like I have hardly even had ten days to be with her before I am gone again.

Happy Birthday to me, literally.

Beach Blanket Baby

It’s 28 degrees Celsius and 4pm on a Tuesday, what do you do? You go to the beach. It is simply a right of passage that all Australian children be exposed to the ocean as soon as possible in their little lives. Dunked in salt water… Freezing temperatures followed by feeling far warmer in the water than out of it… Getting sand in the car… Falling asleep on the way home… The works. So we packed some stuff in the car, put Lily in a little swimmer nappy and costume then off we went. Just for the record, she is not a big baby. Long maybe but not big and the smallest Little Swimmers are 7 kilos +.. They fit her now at 5.5kilos.

On the way we had the usual discussion parents have before they do anything with their baby for the first time. Are we doing the right thing? Is it too cold? Will she be scarred for life? Will someone call child services on us.. It was established that it was fine and the following rules would apply. You can tell which ones my husband added.

1: If she really doesn’t like it even on her feet then we will go before she gets too worked up.

2: If she does like it and we stay, we’ll make sure to leave before she gets sick of it and keep it on a high note.

3: In the event that we get there and she hates it, for whatever reason, (this is expected and very possible) can we still say she went for a swim? We will use the ‘Male Ruling of Swimming’ where you can say you went for a swim if you went in deep enough to get your balls wet. Anything less than Ball Depth (BD) can only be referred to as a paddle, wade or any other wimpy description.

We get there, pile out of the car, down to the ocean and it is freezing! A concerned foreign onlooker volunteers that babies usually don’t like to swim until at least 6 months… She obviously doesn’t understand the Australian way. We decide that since we are here, we’ll dunk her feet in and just see..

Feet go in… She is unsure about this and makes a few noises that translated from Baby mean, “are you kidding?” and “why isn’t everyone wearing water proof pants with Nemo on them?”. She goes in further and further and now without a peep.. granted a skeptical expression on her face, but that’s about all. Before we know it, Daddy is in (BD), up to his balls and hey presto! It’s a swim!

I grin as the opinionated women looks on and we swim further away, us with our 8 week old happy baby, and her with a two year old son screaming because he is afraid of water touching him. Sometimes, life is just good. About 40 minutes after we arrived, we were heading back towards the car, Lily almost asleep on my shoulder and I am just happy. Watching her experience another ‘first’ is just fantastic. It was wonderful that she enjoyed it too, and under the worst of circumstances as well.. she was tired, hungry and grumpy because last I heard, the red frog (from her mobile) broke their relationship off and now gets boo’d when he does the rounds. These crazy kids these days…

Of course she can’t yet call herself a real Aussie beach kid yet.. not until she has fallen over walking on the rocks, come home with the itchies from sea lice, been smothered in Stingoes after being stung by something, swum in the salt water until her hair goes stiff, developed a faint cozzie mark tan, mistaken a dolphin for a shark, mistaken seaweed for a shark and found at least an extra kilo of sand in her pants when she finally gets in a shower.

It’s 18 degrees Celsius on a Wednesday and your daughter just realised she likes swimming.. what do you do? … You go to a heated indoor pool until it’s warm enough to go back to the beach.

 

 

Fighting it out..

A baby, a toucan and a cowboy walk into a bar…

Sounds like the start of a mediocre joke I know, but what I’m about to tell you is nothing of the sort. I have the baby and the toucan, admittedly no cowboy, and I never thought the combination could cause such rough and tumble.

It was a beautiful Wednesday afternoon. Our baby girl had just finished having her afternoon feed and was spending her time swinging away in her rainforest swing. Now just to be clear, the swing comes with a mobile that has attached a monkey, a red frog and, the animal of the hour, a troublesome toucan.

As usual, she watched them go round with glee, greeting each one with a smile, a ‘hi my name’s Lily” coo and sometimes an erratic looking jolt-of-the-arm wave depending on who was coming round. There are times when she looks suspiciously at each one as they make their 20th or 21st round, but for some reason, not today. Today, she was equally impressed to meet each one time and time again. I glanced over every now and again, watching as she even made the occasional giggle as the conversation between them turned some what playful. Apparently she was quite fond of the red frogs redness.. and he in turn a fan of her mobility and lack of string attachment. With the flirtation strong, it was a match made in heaven.

Everything was going according to plan when along came that pesky toucan. Now Lily has told me before about this sneaky toucan, describing his shifty eyes and suspiciously over colourful facial features. Lily cooed a frowny coo that got my attention from the kitchen. I knew there could only be one rotating stuffed animal worthy of such a threat. Sure enough.. it was the toucan. They spent a few seconds exchanging blows, Lily with furrowed brow, Toucan with… still colourful beak. Then it was over, she was once again comforted by her other hanging friends, telling each one the story of what had happened, each time a little more exaggerated than the last.

Then the toucan came round again. I heard her coo once more telling him he was simply pushin’ his luck now. I come back out from the kitchen to supervise the encounter but before I could make it there, she was giggling. Apparently the toucan, now sweet hearted and just misunderstood, cracked a joke that turned the whole relationship around. They took a moment together and then parted their separate ways.

As the monkey and red frog come around this time, she tells them of how she has given the toucan a second chance, although she still thinks he has shifty eyes.

A baby and a toucan walk into a bar and the baby says to the toucan, what’s with the beak? When he comes around again, she says, no seriously, what’s that about?… Don’t give me that look… Don’t make me come up there.

Oh it’s on now…

New Outfits for Mummy.

The last few months of your pregnancy, you dream about new clothes, fitting into something other than your almost worn out pregnancy moo moo and having more than one pair of pants that fit. However, there is a catch to the post birthing shopping spree that someone left out of the government sponsored “make time for you” hand book. It’s called…

.. Baby Proof Clothing.

Once you have managed to loose the baby weight, if not the baby inches, and you’re back out and ready to look for some new clothes there are a few new things to keep in mind.

1: No one told me that even though the baby and associated weight would be gone that my chest would be so ginormous that I could no longer find any piece of clothing to fit my enormous bosoms AND the rest of my body.. My departure from moo moo land, not as hasty as I would have liked. The next few months while breastfeeding I am destined to be three sizes different between my chest and body measurements. Hell, at this rate I could still have a baby under there and no one would know any different.

2: When your dying to get back into the plunging neck lines and feel sexy for the first time in a long time (especially if unlike me, you are enjoying your new bustline you always wished you had) you don’t think that the excitement of buying your first lusted after neckline will be closely followed by disappointment of it being covered in baby throw up. But how is that different to anything else you wear, you ask? I’ll tell you. When your baby is on your shoulder, usually mid burp, if some spew escapes, it NEVER just soaks into the towel you have carefully covered yourself with up there.. instead, unlike the movies, it trickles down over the top like running down glass. Down your shoulder, down your chest, down your cleavage and making it’s final escape into either the buffer of your bra, or soaking into the stomach part of your tops material. This is damage that can not be covered with a cardigan my friends. All of a sudden, all your sexy new top makes for is more laundry, and before it even makes a public debut.

3: Your days of black are not over. Time for colour and pattern now that your not the size of a house you think?.. no.. sorry, Because between baby spit up, leaking breasts and the extra sweat you get from the work of carrying around an extra 5 or 6 kilos of baby, you need all the concealing help you can get.

I could go on, but I may have scared you all enough.

My “Stuff” Table

I have a little table next to my chair in the living room, in fact it is more along th lines of an ottoman with a flat top. Before Lily came its contents included my work diary, my laptop, a myer catalogue, bills, lip gloss and a pen.

Now it is a much different story. My lap top remains but most of the time is just an extra flat surface to house anything that I need to balance, including a drink or finger food when I have a baby in my arm and breastfeeding pillow taking up all the space. At the moment as I look over, it has a tigger rattle, a baby gund wrist rattle, 2 cloth nappies (used for feeding, not as nappies) an unused disposable nappy, a toys r us baby catalogue, baby nail cutting scissors and a left over thank you card I still haven’t sent.

The bills don’t even make it over here now.

Sleep or Awake?

One of the most surprising parts of parenthood for me so far is sleep. Not the sleep they tell you about, or lack there of, but what happens when you do in fact get to close your eyes.

We spend so long during our days caring for our newborns, loving them, feeding them, getting them to sleep, holding them.. the works, so it’s no wonder that the caring doesn’t stop when we go to sleep. Every night for the first few weeks of our daughters settling in at home I would dream about holding her and feeding her, doing the general things or even being in bed just laying in the same position, but whilst holding our little girl. Sounds sweet I know, but then I wake up. In a few moments of mini terror, I enter panic mode as I notice my baby girl is suddenly not in my arms.

I remember saying to my husband over and over, “where’s the baby?”, “Have you got the baby?” … several times a night.

After a few more seconds I realize I am in bed, it’s ok, she is in her cot… but that does not help at the time I can assure you. When it happens I’m seconds away from looking under the bed and under the sheets thinking I have dropped her or lost her in the bedroom.

It makes for less than restful sleep.

It’s taken over a month now before I can say I only have these dreams a few times a week, you’d think it wouldn’t last this long but for me, it has. It’s the things like this they don’t tell you about.