tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40438838484691775712024-02-20T20:26:46.003+11:00MumdanityOne Australian mum's journey through the wonderful, maddening and curious mumdays, otherwise known as parenting.Mumdanityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10124926488931146615noreply@blogger.comBlogger51125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4043883848469177571.post-27089307292922752812020-08-25T17:52:00.000+10:002020-08-25T17:52:09.935+10:00When the Bookends Fell <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfIvVgJWcVYUFHaib7pi4Y6gVDbrnuH4aVv2lsJOE5KUejRMLpkHzp5e3VSOGIZakUNX7pgCfeoAZgxtc_GNR5bsRiqu2oL4kxLv__-0GKSZgTTmIk-eDZcA12yV7zcdt4s1hW_pX131E/s2048/20200415_171010.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1302" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfIvVgJWcVYUFHaib7pi4Y6gVDbrnuH4aVv2lsJOE5KUejRMLpkHzp5e3VSOGIZakUNX7pgCfeoAZgxtc_GNR5bsRiqu2oL4kxLv__-0GKSZgTTmIk-eDZcA12yV7zcdt4s1hW_pX131E/s640/20200415_171010.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>If you'd asked me back in February what a successful working week looked like, it most certainly wouldn't have looked anything like the like the week I barely survived last week. Or the week I am inelegantly wading through now. Not even a smidgen. </div><div><br /></div><div>Back then, four of my five working days each week were bookended by getting-ready and getting-home mayhem. Mornings were a carnival of hair-wrangling, teeth-brushing, uniform-uncrumpling, emergency lost shoe location, daycare and primary school drop-offs, awkwardly running for the train, and then trying not to spill coffee on my fellow commuters.</div><div><br /></div><div>Evenings were a similar affair, only in reverse; squeezing onto an overcrowded peak hour train in time to try and collect my small people from their respective locations, running baths, throwing endless washing in the machine, cutting up sandwiches for lunchboxes, trying to read my book club novel and consistently falling asleep with the book on my face three paragraphs in. Rinse. Repeat. Rinse. Repeat.</div><div><br /></div><div>I'll admit, the morning and evening 'bookends' were exhausting. Sometimes a little bit exhausting, sometimes a lot. More often than I ever used to admit, I would stop and close my eyes for a nanosecond and dream up ways to get off the treadmill, out of the daily grind.</div><div><br /></div><div>But somehow, the routine and the rhythm and the structure made it all work. As a full-time working parent, partnered in life and madness with another full-time working parent, the bookends held our world together. Even on my regular work-from-home days, the bookends held strong, carrying out the morning and evening rituals with my children, and running a standard workday in a different location, just in plain clothes, not professional ones. </div><div><br /></div><div>The bookends separated parent me, weekend me, bookclub failing, personal, individual me, from working me. They got me to and from the office. They created the glorious, important, productive time, place, and space to focus on work, and doing the things I love to do in my professional life. They gave my work-from-home partner the physical and mental space he needed to pursue his professional goals and achieve his deliverables in peace. They got my children to the places they needed to go each day to learn, to make friends, to stretch their limbs and climb their own mountains, and grow as emerging individuals of their own.</div><div><br /></div><div>And then, in March, the pandemic arrived in our Melbourne lives and the bookends started to erode. Bit by bit, tid by tad, the narrative began to change. First, it was the office, gone from my daily life with the transition to working from home. Mot just one day a week, but every day of the week. It was a significant change, but only mildly seismic, sending small but survivable tremors through our daily structure. Then it was school, with the closure of physical classrooms and the introduction of remote learning, and the fusing of working and parenting; this was a far more seismic affair, that shook the walls and reshaped the ground. And then, finally, it was daycare, with the smallest (yet defiantly loudest, largest) member of the family added to the increasing mellee. The slow erosion had become an avalanche, and our structure collapsed.</div><div><br /></div><div>And now, in the back-end of August, it's an all-in, unstructured family-work-life affair. The bookends have entirely disbanded and structure has unraveled. Time has become an abstract concept, with weeks and months rolling into one elongated stretch of time. </div><div><br /></div><div>Instead of opening paragraphs and closing sentences, days are punctuated erratically and very differently, with work deliverables, competing Zoom schedules, and the emotional ups and downs of four humans stuck in infuriatingly, yet endearingly, close proximity, the only markers of time and movement. Along with new episodes of Rosehaven dropped weekly on the ABC on a Wednesday evening - sometimes the only thing that reminds me we are halfway through another 'week', whatever that is. </div><div><br /></div><div>We know, beyond doubt, that we are an incredibly fortunate quartet, and we are the first to call it out check ourselves when we feel like things are tough. We are together. We are here. We are safe and warm and healthy and fed. We have electricity, and water, and the technology that we need to work and learn(and watch the aforementioned Rosehaven). My partner and I are both still employed, and we are supported as coworkers and working parents by our wonderful workplaces and our incredible colleagues, and by our family and friends around the globe, as we all collectively navigate the 'new normal' collectively and do our best to evolve and progress and continue.</div><div><br /></div><div>But things certainly do not look or feel the same. Try as we have, we have not been able to recreate the solidity of the old bookends, in any new shape or form. We are constantly reaching for a structure that doesn't exist and failing miserably to recreate a new one that works. We are trying to be all the things to each other, at the same time as being all the things we used to be in the workplace, as well as trying to find a sense of calm and reason. </div><div><br /></div><div>Some days it works. Some days it doesn't. Some mornings start with optimism and end up in a crumpled heap by noon. One morning recently, the day had already been so intense I lost my cool and felt an overwhelming need to return to bed - and it was only 8:05am. Some days, we help our daughter tick off all the remote learning tasks, we 'eat' playdough creations at the backyard cubby cafe, get a load of dishes done, and get all our deliverables out the door. </div><div><br /></div><div>Other days, the kids bust in on every phone and video call, we make mistakes because we are tired, and we lose our tempers because the weight of everything and nothing all at once is suddenly too heavy. We fail to see actual sunlight or make it out for a permitted hour of exercise, we experience sensory overload and retreat into our headphones for large portions of the day, and we eat breakfast for dinner while wearing the same clothes as yesterday. </div><div><br /></div><div>In February, looking back on a successful week involved getting things ticked off at work and kicking goals; getting the kids to and from school and daycare; progressing something or another on our personal lists that we had set out to achieve - as well as brushing our hair, and interacting with other humans in a face-to-face capacity, each and every day. </div><div><br /></div><div>Now, success is making it through another 'week' and keeping it together as best we can. It's about surviving or thriving, depending on the day of the week or the minute of the day. It's about doing as many things as we can, the best we can, and not always doing the best at all the things. </div><div><br /></div><div>It's about managing energy over time, necessity over desire, and valuing long term outcomes over immediate outputs and gains. It's about trying our hardest, yet trying not to be too hard on ourselves when our hardest isn't enough. It's about supporting ourselves and our friends and families and our colleagues, and being overwhelmed with gratitude when the support comes flowing back. </div><div><br /></div><div>And as for the picture, well, sometimes it's about letting the kids lay every book in the house up and down the hallway to create an imaginary library so you can get through a Zoom call in relative peace. Because even without the 'bookends' of before, the stories of now just keep on coming. </div><div><b></b><br /></div><div><b>Wherever you are, however you are getting through it - keep going! We're getting there! </b></div><div><b></b><br /></div><div>M x</div>Mumdanityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10124926488931146615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4043883848469177571.post-51295519827341586682018-12-03T20:41:00.001+11:002018-12-03T21:25:50.063+11:00The Mumdanity Roars On <div dir="ltr">
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22 days until another Christmas. And in the blink of a sleep deprived - possibly crusted with some daycare conjunctivitis - eye, more than two years have passed since I last tapped out a Mumdanity post.</div>
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Yet despite the emergence of daughter number two, the increasing height and sass of daughter number one, and the total annihilation of my final remnants of sanity, the mumdanity continues.</div>
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Indeed, the mumdanity is roaring louder than ever. I hear it through the bathtime screams, and over my kids as they shout demands down the supermarket aisles. It is dogged. It pushes its way over the vacuum. It rumbles alongside and in time with the daily commute. It stutters with perfect stacatto through Saturday ballet. Somehow, it even pushes through the infernal wall of white noise behind which we hide the toddler. And ourselves. </div>
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Time is limited these days, much like loo paper supplies in our house now that toilet training is back in our lives in earnest. But the squeezing of time is no excuse to let a good outlet for mundane, mumdane, mad, mothering mayhem disappear into the couch cracks with the sultanas and twenty cent coins. </div>
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Mumdanity is making a comeback, one Instagram picture at a time - with added ramblings when the universe allows.</div>
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Pull up a food stained chair, crack open a sippy cup of wine, follow us on <a href="http://instagram.com/mumdanity" target="_blank">Instagram</a> and put your feet up as the Mumdanity carries on.<br />
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M xMumdanityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10124926488931146615noreply@blogger.com0Melbourne VIC, Australia-37.8136276 144.96305759999996-39.415753599999995 142.38127059999997 -36.2115016 147.54484459999995tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4043883848469177571.post-39765544129350152872016-09-14T12:45:00.000+10:002016-09-16T06:20:38.179+10:00A Moment of Knowing<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">'m not quite sure why, but for as long as I can remember, I have wanted to have two children. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Two squirming, squawking little babies to cuddle. Two, sticky, grumpy, cheeky monkeys to cart around on school runs and family holidays. Two siblings, always present and willing to steal each others toys and fight with one another in the backseat of the family car. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">After giving birth to my first cheeky monkey, I merrily assumed there would be a natural progression of parenting and time until my husband and I would just magically 'know' that the time was right for baby number two. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">You know, the stars would align, our debts would magically pay themselves off, we would reach parenting level ten and we would know that now was the time to double the laundry pile indefinitely. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Yet as with just about every assumption I made in the 28 years prior to giving birth, and every assumption I made in the delusional six month hurricane period that followed after I squeezed my lovely watermelon sized cheeky monkey into existence, the magical moment of 'knowing' just never came. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana";">Perhaps I was naïve to believe that such a moment could exist. Perhaps I was whacked out from all the maternal hormones and new motherly love. Perhaps the moment came and went unnoticed, dashing past us while we had our heads stuck in the washing machine looking for the eternally lost other sock. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Regardless of the reason, somewhere between the early mornings, exhausted nights, daycare drop offs, spilt babycinos, epic tantrums in the supermarket carpark and explanations of WHY one must eat vegetables and WHY must not jump off the couch, the natural moment of 'knowing' got lost on us. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana";">Yet our cheeky monkey was climbing higher, further, faster, we were rapidly running out of room in the shed to store our brightly coloured collection of baby and toddler collateral, and the stars didn't seem to be any closer to aligning than they were on the day I gave birth. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">And so we came to an enormous crossroads, smack bang in the middle of our otherwise clearly mapped out suburban lives. A decision loomed large: t</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">o continue as a family of three, or take a chance on becoming a rambunctious rabble of four?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-family: "verdana";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana";">We tried to be logical - we tried to look at our bank balance and our credit card statements and be adult about numbers and logistics and what ifs and then whats. We tried to be emotional - we talked about our feelings and our hopes and our dreams and our fears. We tried to be drunk and detached - we just got distracted and watched a movie instead of finding the answers to the universe.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana";">But at the end of the day, we realised that there is no magical moment of knowing and there is no perfect time. There is no right or wrong answer, and no way to predict what the future holds. And the </span><span style="font-family: "verdana";">stars are nothing but luminous balls of gas producing heat and bad metaphors in a very distance place, which have very little relevance to our reproductive decisions. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana";">There is no way to definitively know. So we r</span><span style="font-family: "verdana";">olled the dice. We took a chance. We were incredibly lucky. And now we are three plus a bump. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana";">And while we still don't know if we will ever know if we really knew or even know that we know, we can't wait to meet our second cheeky monkey at the end of the year. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana";"><strong>How did you know when, or if, it was time to have another child?</strong></span><br />
<strong><span style="font-family: "verdana";"></span></strong><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana";">M x </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana";"></span><br />Mumdanityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10124926488931146615noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4043883848469177571.post-59934497298644546212015-12-22T11:29:00.000+11:002015-12-22T20:08:15.699+11:00Breaking New Traditions<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">My Christmas experiences have always been punctuated by a series of fast and fleeting traditions, drawn from the different corners of my family and pulled from my celebratory cheeseboard of friends, follies, foibles and life experiences. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">As with so many haircuts and dreams and Christmas wish lists, the Christmas traditions that decorate my life have waxed and waned in brightness and closeness with the passing of time and the growing of up. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">My earliest Christmas memories centre around the red brick barbecue and the inflatable wading pool, like a festively pegged Hills Hoist in full flight. Presents were swapped in the lounge room, with a joke gift hidden among every piece of present gold, while a lone pedestal failed to keep the <a href="http://www.mumdanity.com/2015/12/breaking-new-traditions.html" target="_blank">summer heat</a> at bay. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Those earliest Christmas days were accented with plastic table cloths, sliced ham, honeycomb bites and bowls of beetroot and pineapple up and down the trestle table - almost but not quite long enough to fit the growing family - and soundscaped with the pop of bottle lids and</span><span style="font-family: Verdana;"> the rhythmic shhhh-shhhh of the backyard sprinkler. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">As time moved along and my legs inched taller, the traditions and family numbers grew too. I remember festive day trips to the annual Christmas Pantomime, followed by melting icecream moments on the foreshore. Then there were the</span><span style="font-family: Verdana;"> blissfully long Christmas evenings singing carols in the family room, hunting buried coin treasure in the pudding, and competing over board games with </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">the extended family until the grown-ups nightcaps capped the day for another year.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">As my childhood morphed into adulthood, our Christmas traditions organically lapsed into</span><span style="font-family: Verdana;"> lazy days on the back deck; simple days of books and socks ensconced in wrapping paper, topped with a fruit breakfast, sandwiched with a seafood spread, and tailed with a lazy champagne (or four) on the lounge. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">When I tumbled into parenthood, Christmas traditions took on a whole new level of meaning. As a self-confessed <a href="http://www.mumdanity.com/2013/11/constructing-christmas.html" target="_blank">Christmasoholic</a>, I set my jingly Christmas heart on creating a whole new suite of traditions for our little family of three - </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">making our own Christmas cards, visiting obnoxiously bold light displays, wearing daggy Christmas Eve pajamas, and donating old toys before Santa's arrival each year. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">At the centre of my tradition bonanza was the annual Christmas decoration acquisition. Drawing on scattered memories from my own childhood and an embarrassingly strong love of Christmas decorations, I decided we would hunt, gather and add one new special decoration to the family tree each year. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">With the passing of time, these shiny objects would combine together to tell a unique and expanding family narrative.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">The year my daughter was born, </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">I ventured into the city to a department store to purchase one unique decoration to mark the occasion. After extensive oohing and ahhing in the magical cave of Christmas trim and several bouts of indecision, I settled on an ornate glass baby bauble with the year marked on it. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Last year, with my toddler presenting a serious decoration hazard, I opted for a child-friendly decoration - a non-breakable, pastel fabric ice-cream cone with sparkly bits and a large woollen 'hook' for pulling on and off the tree. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">This year, my daughter proudly chose her own silver star, from the department store shelf - dripping with enough glitter to start our own decoration factory at home - and carefully carried it with her in the car, in her bag, in her bed, in her hand, to do anything with but hang on the tree. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">In line with family tradition, we hauled the </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Christmas tree bits and bobs in from the shed on the first day of December and hoisted the tree into place for another year. As we set about hanging the ornaments, we realised that the ice-cream cone decoration was missing in action. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Retracing our steps, we found a trail of shimmering fabric leading to an ice-cream shaped mess</span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">: chewed up, annihilated, in the middle of the backyard, next to our guilty looking dog. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Somewhat deflated by our now truncated tradition, we turned our attention to the original glass ornament that started it all. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">My daughter proudly picked it up, grinned with Christmas excitement, and dropped the ball hard on the timber floor before I could scoop it out of her little hands: smashed, obliterated, in the middle of the floor, next to our bauble-shocked two year old. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">In the blink of an eye, all that was left of my young tradition was some shredded fabric, some rogue glass smithereens, a trail of glitter leading to a portable Christmas ornament companion, and the memory of ornaments now past. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">But from the complete tradition failure, I think we have actually managed to create a real story and a real tradition: of broken ornaments, family moments and Christmases lived and laughed and loved.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">I can't wait to buy another ornament and live through its inevitable demise next year. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;"><strong>What are your favourite Christmas traditions?</strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">M x </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />Mumdanityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10124926488931146615noreply@blogger.com0Melbourne VIC, Australia-37.814107 144.96327999999994-38.6164245 143.67238649999993 -37.0117895 146.25417349999995tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4043883848469177571.post-12935540847893056112015-11-15T23:40:00.000+11:002015-11-17T13:42:30.505+11:00How to spend $50k in a day (minus $30 for expenses) <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Money is a funny old thing. It has the uncanny ability to be both real and imagined, hidden and omnipresent, enabling and terrifying, and to mean everything and nothing, all at the very same time - and often both at once. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Despite its rollercoaster state through and around my existence, money has been a strange form of constant in my life in one balance or another for as long as I can remember. Inflections of money shimmer in memories scrapbooked throughout my life: from </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">clawing at the chocolate coins in my Christmas stocking each year as a kid, saving my tiny after school job pay packets for a pair of surf brand jeans, counting shrapnel at the checkout counter in the first year of uni, through to balancing my current credit card repayment tsunami against the weekly day care bills, money has been a constant companion on my journey through life, marriage and parenting. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In amongst the rabble of work, marriage and parenting an increasingly rambunctious toddler, I often find myself descending into a day dream about money. In between the hits and misses of every day life, I imagine how I would let loose and splash out if the magical rainbow of life ever accidentally got inebriated, tilted on its axis and dropped a pot of money into my unsuspecting lap - <a href="http://www.mortgagechoice.com.au/50kgiveaway" target="_blank">much like the $50,000 bucket currently on offer from Mortgage Choice in their $50k Giveaway</a>, open to borrowers who settle </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">a home loan of $150,000 or more with Mortgage Choice before 31 January 2016. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana";">When I through my tepid afternoon coffee at my messy desk, or trying to refrain from showering vulgar obscenities and not-so-gentle thumps at the obstinate photocopier in the office for the fifteenth time in a single day, I swear black and blue I would drop the full sweet $50,000 on setting up my own business in an unblinking instant. </span><span style="font-family: "verdana";"> In one sweet, big spending swoop, I would give myself 50,000 cool reasons to drop out of the daily grind and be my own boss. No start times, no imposed deadlines, no office biscuit tin battles, no daily grand prix battle along the commuter congested freeways, through ways, tram ways and no ways of the suburban, urban pack. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana";">When I find </span><span style="font-family: "verdana";">myself fighting sleep on the packed homeward bound commute each afternoon, petrified of drooling on my fellow passengers and missing my fleeting stop on the dreadfully long line home, I imagine using my dreamy pot of gold to pack up my urban life and fit my little piece of the sea change puzzle into the quiet life whole. I dream of breaking up the balance across packing boxes, removalists, estate agents and fuel to get from the high rise scape out to the low rise escape, with enough left in the bag to lower through the gears until it's quiet enough to hear nothing but the birds in the backyard and the kettle on the stove calling cuppa time. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana";">When I re-enter </span><span style="font-family: "verdana";">the same toddler-toddled, exhaustion-soddled domestic orbit each evening, I find myself traipsing the imaginary money fantastic again. </span><span style="font-family: "verdana";">In the midst of </span><span style="font-family: "verdana";">pleading with my two year old to please stop throwing her dinner at the dog, please take her pyjama pants back off her yoghurt covered head, and just darn well go and make good with her arch nemesis Sleepy Nod, I momentarily let myself wonder just how far $50,000 could go in au pair services. How many minutes, hours, breaths, glasses of wine, family-sized blocks of chocolate and snatches of tantalising parental sanity, could a single pot of wishful gold potentially deliver back to me over the next sixteen odd years?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana";">When I find myself</span><span style="font-family: "verdana";"> retrieving furry sultanas out of the couch cushions for the umpteenth time in no time, extricating mashed purple crayon from the dogs fur, or inexplicably pulling crispy dolls clothes out of the toddler-height chest freezer, I imagine spending $50,000 to buy myself a lifetime of cleanliness. How sweet and eternally vacuum-bagless it would be to place a Mary Poppins style advertisement up on the web, calling for a cleaning angel with a magic bag full of shine, dust, polish and de-sultana powers to simply come in and take care of business while I do 50,000 blissfully unrelated things. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana";">When the long afternoons and longer commutes, the frazzled evenings and the mutating sultanas all become too much, I find myself sliding into the warmth of my tropical holiday day dream. I flick from travel website to adventure blogs and back again, dreaming of the places I could go if I simply had no place to go. If I had $50,000 land in my play dough and coffee stained lap, I would happily stomp into the travel agents office, lay $50,000 sweet ones down on the table and demand somewhere, anywhere, with sand and cocktails, and flee the shackles of reality to live happily ever after, mojito in one hand and receipt in the other. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana";">Yet when the dreams fade and the bath water gets cold and the time comes to get ready for bed and prepare for another week at the desk and another week being mum to my family, I realise that my day dreams tucker out at night along with the daily exhaustion and suburban grit and frizz. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana";">I</span><span style="font-family: "verdana";">f I somehow managed to stumble across $50,000 one day, I probably would momentarily hover outside the travel agents with my bank card hot in my hand, itching to get going to go get. Then, after one last fleeting arc of day dream, I </span><span style="font-family: "verdana";">would turn on my work heels and plunge the whole glimmering bundle into a mortgage on my very own piece of inner-outer suburban space and place: a </span><span style="font-family: "verdana";">roof to sleep my tired body under, a verandah to dream my day dreams upon, a maze of walls to store our toddler artworks along, a lounge room to stash our furry sultanas in, <em>a house to make a home from</em>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana";">Well, $49,970 at least. Rounded out with $30 on an average bottle of sauvignon blanc, a family-sized block of chocolate and a travel mag from the local shops on the way home. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana";"><em><strong>How would you spend $50,000 in a day?</strong></em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana";">M x </span>Mumdanityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10124926488931146615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4043883848469177571.post-77643786850360198652015-08-14T17:23:00.000+10:002015-08-18T06:43:48.081+10:00Same Yet Different: How Motherhood has Changed Me<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />I see many articles pop up in my newsfeed about the </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">changes that come with motherhood. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">These articles stretch from one side of the opinion spectrum to the other, recording beautifully positive maternal experiences through to tumultuous journeys of upheaval and challenge. Some mums seem to rejoice in claiming the cloak of motherhood, while others struggle with a loss of individual identity and space. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">I find myself teetering in the middle of the spectrum. My life has changed in so many ways since I entered the murky waters of motherhood, yet I still happily drag my former self with me through all my parenting journeys, much like a toddler who drags their beloved blankie on magical adventures far and wide. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">My social life has changed almost beyond recognition. Before entering the mummy zone, weekends were carefree; slow-moving scores of time peppered with barbecues, late dinners out, crowded bars and cold afternoon beverages shared in the park with friends. Now, weekends are frantic two-day jigsaw puzzles filled with oddly shaped pieces of zoo visits, university assignments, grocery shopping, adventure playgrounds, tea parties and battling my way to the washing machine. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Catch-up with friends are now brief, frazzled encounters involving repeated cries of 'please don't draw on Mummy and Daddy's friends glass coffee table with your milk' and 'put that down, it's worth more than our whole house' - or they are rare late night affairs out and about, made possible by combining painkillers and patience with a wonderful partner who is willing to take the burden while my head slowly caves in on itself the next morning. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">My vocabulary has also taken a whole new direction. Expletives have given way to sweeter approximations, with <em>fuuu...rrr</em> out <em>shhh....ooot</em> getting regular workouts and my grandmother's trademark Sugar Honey Ice Tea popping in for routine appearances. Letters have replaced key words, with marital conversations within ears reach of our daughter now sounding like a rapid-fire adult spelling bee, often assisted by wild hand gestures and crinkled facial expressions for added conversational emphasis. And it's not unusual to find myself uttering absurd phrases to my toddler that would have made my former self think I was quite mad: <em>if you put pink teddy, mummy horsey or your cow light in the garbage bin again then Mummy will be sad and the new ice cubes won't freeze and you won't be able to put any in your bowl until tomorrow.</em> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Work and study have become entirely different experiences. Before becoming a mum, work and university were generally the main meals of my day, providing the bulk of my mental sustenance and serving as the </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">fiercest fire up my backside to get up, get going and fight my forward. These days, work and study have transitioned to an essential but elemental part of my independent freedom, a series of happy challenges to sandwich between the many other meals of the day. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Deadlines used to stand up in my calendar like menancing mountains, hard and cold and seemingly near impossible to scale. The project topic or essay theme would consume my mind completely, from shower to third draft to all night, panic stations. Now, the deadlines are merely friendly markers, little flags waving in the breeze requiring a slot in my diary and two coffees worth of brain space. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">My body has also changed irrevocably. Size, shape, girth - even my <a href="http://www.mumdanity.com/2013/10/waist-ed-days.html" target="_blank">foot size</a> has increased. After two and half years of slow postnatal deflation, I have retunred to most of my former wardrobe and now outwardly appear to be a reasonable approximation of my previous self. But the changes lurk behind the surface, with a series stretch marks and scars, an expanded ribcage and vastly lowered breast reminding my daily of my physical losses and my incredible life gains. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">My new body has found a companion in an increased pain threshold. Having made it through a birth where I missed the window for pain relief and was too uncoordinated to suck on the gas, I seem to have discovered the art of sucking it up. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Where once a heavy cold would have me bedridden and moaning for assistance, a headache plagued, snotty attack now serves as added ammunition to grit my shivering teeth and get on with all the various shit on the life list - because, really, who else is going to pick up the plastic beetle, the discarded wipes, the three hundred lid-deprived textas and the half eaten apple shoved under the couch that are driving me mad? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Curiously, I have also become calm where I used to feel anxious, and anxious in the times and places that</span><span style="font-family: Verdana;"> I used to feel calm. I am uncertain if the change is due to the shifting priorities in my life, or the many lessons I have had to learn, or the sheer exhaustion running from my tired brain to my expanded feet - but I am too tired to be anxious about it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">The many changes across my world are readily evident. Becoming a mother has changed my life irrevocably and starkly, a </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">giant line drawn across the page of my life in black ink the day my daughter was born. As bold, as stark, as permanent as the big fat marker lines my toddler proudly tattooed onto my couch last month. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The one thing that being a mum hasn't been able to change though is the essence of me. You know, those <em>things</em> that make you, you and me, me. The <em>things</em> that would have to be ironed out of the very fabric of your being by a mystical force far greater than the combined magic of Peppa Pig, Playschool and a box of sultanas on a rainy (hungover) Sunday morning with a two year old. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Through the multitudinous changes and strangeness of parenting, my essence has remained firmly intact. Whether I'm pleading with my toddler to put her pants on or hiding in the bathroom eating chips or sitting in a work meeting, I am immovably, unquestionably still the same me I have always been. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">For better, for worse, and for all the weird everything in between. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">The proof is in the littlest little things, the tiny parts that make up the big moving - generally very clumsy - object that is me. The things most of us never acknowledge about ourselves, but that we all know to be as true as they come and generally as odd as can be. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">The little truths. Like I still believe that birthday cake is magical and should be worshipped, especially during office gatherings and mundane routine occasions - I will always be the first to begin the ungainly cake box hover, the first to have seconds, and the very last to leave a piece lying alone on the plate. Or how I will tackle the biggest bully in the room regardless of consequence, but would rather eat my own shoes than complain that someone got my sandwich order wrong. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">The unconscious bits. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Like I still </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">scrunch and crinkle my nose like a hyperactive rabbit looking for premature crease lines every time I use my brain - left scrunch or uncertain, moderate scrunch for concern, mild crinkle for happy - and I still inadvertently blink my eyes in rapid succession when trying to pretend I'm not having an emotional explosion on the inside. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">The quirky quirks. Like I <span style="font-family: Verdana;">mentally read the word 'podiatrist' as 'po-deeattrist' and add imaginary exclamation marks to uneven words to tidy them up for my liking. I still despise loose socks, pruny bath fingers and crinkling plastic sounds, firmly believing that all three were sent to undo my sanity one horrifically mundane, mundanely horrific sensation at a time. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">And the little heart things. Like how I still love coffee in bed and bright flowers in bunches and collecting more books than my shelves can ever possibly hold. And how I believe that cheese is always the great answer, Scrabble is always the great leveller in love, and that antagonism laced with wit is flirting done well. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">And so it is that I find myself happily stranded in the middle of the parenting change spectrum: undeniably still the same, yet simultaneously transformed in all the best possible ways. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">M x </span><br />
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<em><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Linking with <a href="http://www.withsomegrace.com/fybf-what-passes-what-sticks/" target="_blank">With Some Grace</a> for FYBF</span></em>Mumdanityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10124926488931146615noreply@blogger.com2Melbourne VIC, Australia-37.814107 144.96327999999994-38.6164245 143.67238649999993 -37.0117895 146.25417349999995tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4043883848469177571.post-41399098502206462212015-08-08T17:36:00.000+10:002015-08-15T13:44:00.848+10:00A Beginners Guide to Baking a Baby from Scratch<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Joining the bun in the oven club can seem overwhelming - but it doesn't have to be. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />Here is my simple seven-step beginners guide to baking a baby, from scratch. </span><br />
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<span style="color: orange; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><strong>Prepare</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">First things first, it's always a good idea to check out some already finished products to make sure this really is the right cooking career for you. Take notice of random kids and their parents in their native habitats. Witness how they interact in the park when it reaches home time. Watch the battle of wits in the car park when it's time to get in the car seat. Observe the dynamics at play when they enter the confectionery aisle at the supermarket. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Alternatively, stalk down your friends with kids and offer to cook them dinner so you can examine their finished products up close. See how cute the kids are? See how they cuddle their parents so sweetly? See how they just threw the dinner you cooked for everyone on the floor? See how they just decked each other across the dining table with a Lego truck and started screaming like banshees? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">If you haven't started crying into the sink yet or retreated to the nearest pub for therapy, then you are probably in a pretty good space to crack out the apron and get started. </span><br />
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<strong><span style="color: orange; font-family: Verdana;">Practice</span></strong><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Baking is an acquired skill, and practice really does make perfect. If you're not quite ready to start on your prize winning dish, or you're still feeling somewhat traumatised by the Lego truck incident, take that apron straight back off and practice your skills without the added pressure of a ticking oven timer. </span><br />
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<span style="color: orange; font-family: Verdana;"><strong>Combine ingredients</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Skilled up? If you haven't already accidently created a masterpiece, grab your willing baking partner and set aside a good chunk of time to source and combine your ingredients. The combination stage is an anything goes type of affair. Some bakers use their own ingredients, others outsource some or all ingredients as required, and some find an offsite oven to meet their personal kitchen requirements. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">There is no set recipe to follow here, so experiment with different styles and methods at will, making sure to add your own personal touches as you go. Layer in some prenatal vitamins, calcium and leafy greens for good measure, and season well with your own personal and genetic characteristics and quirks. A</span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">s overall preparation time can vary wildly, with anecdotal reports ranging from less than a minute to more than a decade, be prepared to spend a fair chunk of time in the kitchen. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Promising early signs that you've chanced upon a successful combination can include feeling a little sea sick, crying over spilt milk and an unnaturally strong desire for potato chips.</span><br />
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<span style="color: orange; font-family: Verdana;"><strong>Bake </strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Shake it, make it, bake it, baby. Place your prepared dish in the oven and bake at a moderate temperature for 40-odd weeks, until well done or otherwise scheduled for removal by your consulting professional. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Remember to periodically crank the thermostat right up to ensure you get the full baking experience of sweat-inducing, arm-pit saturating pregnant temperatures. Make sure to pace around impatiently, tapping on the glass and wishing you could just take it out of the oven already. Distract yourself from the impossibly slow baking progress by sneaking spoonfuls of ice-cream from the freezer, and reading up on the week-by-week stages of baking development and growth. It is recommended that you engage the services of the local ultrasound technician to peer in to the oven at regular intervals throughout the bake to assess progress. It can be cathartic to complain repeatedly to your partner about the length of time the dish is taking to cook. </span><br />
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<span style="color: orange; font-family: Verdana;"><strong>Remove from oven, let stand</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Congratulations, your dish is ready to come out of the oven! Attempt to engage your preferred dish removal strategy, then throw the nice plan out the kitchen window and do whatever it takes to get the damned dish out of the stupid oven already. Advice your fellow kitchen assistants to exercise extreme caution while rendering assistance and support, as removing the dish from the oven is hot work and can lead to volcanic eruptions of screaming and expletives. </span><br />
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<span style="color: orange; font-family: Verdana;"><strong>Admire your creation</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">TA DA! Well, well, look what you did, you cracking little Masterchef you! Feel free to flump back on your delivery bed pillows and gaze at your freshly baked and delivered creation with awe. Marvel at how well the ingredients combined together. Be impressed at your own talents. Goggle over the cuteness of that little-button nose and those impossibly small hands and feet. Enjoy the bliss before the first screaming night feed begins. </span><br />
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<span style="color: orange; font-family: Verdana;"><strong>Allow flavours to develop</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Your baking extravaganza might be over for now, but the journey is just beginning. Much like your old favourites, cheese and wine, children have an astonishing tendency to get bolder, bitier and more expensive with age. Sit back, watch the flavours develop and enjoy as your complex, beautiful creation embarks on an amazing journey of their own. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />M x</span>Mumdanityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10124926488931146615noreply@blogger.com1Melbourne VIC, Australia-37.814107 144.96327999999994-38.6164245 143.67238649999993 -37.0117895 146.25417349999995tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4043883848469177571.post-83033367201328164852015-08-05T13:05:00.003+10:002015-08-06T16:41:41.752+10:00Half and Whole: Being a Working Mum<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">At least once a work day, I feel an overwhelming compulsion to drop what I'm doing, turn around and retrace my steps right back to the <a href="http://www.mumdanity.com/2014/01/the-hardest-decision-easiest-day.html" target="_blank">day care</a> gate as fast as I can. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">It's almost as though a pressure lands on my chest, urging me to chuck in the professional towel and cast off my gathered obligations, commitments and professional life choices in favour of the warm hug of play dough and cuddles.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">The triggers are usually small things; a child laughing on the tram, a glimpse of my daughter smiling cheekily on the desktop wallpaper, the weekly statement of account from the day care centre landing in my inbox, or finding a piece of chalk or handful of pink hairclips in my pocket while reaching for loose change for my morning coffee. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Sometimes, I feel a sense of personal panic simultaneously grip onto my ovaries and my mind like a vice. Questions slam around me in an anxious frenzy: am I getting the true meaning here, am I missing the best bits, am I doing it right?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Other times, I feel the cold sheet of professional concern creep into my mind. I forecast projected outcomes based on little but emotion and a fluttering of anxiety: can I do this justice, where will I land, how will I even get there? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Most times, I am just knocked out flat by a sense of panicky guilt that I'm letting my daughter, my most precious other little heart with sticky fingers and the cheekiest smile I know, down and further down by the second. <br />
<br />
The guilt manifests as a continual sequence of juxtapositions and changing thoughts, influenced by the number of tears at day care drop off multiplied by the quality of the tasks landing on my desk, divided by the drag of the current meter of sleep deprivation clicking through my head. <br />
<br />
I <span style="font-family: Verdana;">suppose this is a living, breathing example of what we all call mummy guilt, a sense of parental anxiety and a feeling of taking too much and giving too little all while just trying to balance the damned scales. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">But no matter the approach, the balance never seems quite right. When you have more than one driving force propelling you forward from within, more than one passion oscillating in your brain, more than one big destination on your radar, </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">the target weights just never seem to line up the right way. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">No matter how you carve up your day or fill up your calendar or dish out your heart, is starts to feel like the grass is always that little bit greener on the other side - whatever that is, however you get there, and whenever you can. </span><br />
<br />
This isn't a problem, and there is no solution. It is just the way it is for me, a permanent straight split, straight out division lanced down the middle of my two intricately fused yet staunchly disparate halves: mother, professional, confused.<br />
<br />
I need both halves to make a whole.<br />
I need the whole to house both halves. <br />
And my daughter needs both the halves and the whole mum together. <br />
<br />
M x </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span>
<br /><br /><br />
<a href="http://honestmum.com/category/brilliant-blog-posts/"><img style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; display: block;" src="http://i.imgur.com/fJzNWoE.jpg" alt="Brilliant blog posts on HonestMum.com" width="301" height="189" /></a>Mumdanityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10124926488931146615noreply@blogger.com2Melbourne VIC, Australia-37.814107 144.96327999999994-38.6164245 143.67238649999993 -37.0117895 146.25417349999995tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4043883848469177571.post-68863938049295957082015-07-30T00:22:00.001+10:002015-07-31T14:13:17.864+10:00Phrased Out: Talking Toddler<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Time is growing up, and so is my child. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">In between the commutes and the tickles and the bath and bed routines, my toddler is fast shifting through the months into a fully fledged little person, with a rapidly growing vocabulary to match. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span> </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">The leaps and bounds into language have provided a plethora of gorgeous moments. Slightly mispronounced words, cute songs from start to finish, muddled up versions of the ABC, and counting from one to fifteen with only twelve numbers. Just</span><span style="font-family: Verdana;"> last night she told me she wanted to give me a <em>big cuggle and kisses </em>before requesting I sing <em>Twinkle Twinkle one more at door Mummy pwease. </em></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">There went my heart, again. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Mastering toddler language has given my daughter the power to express herself. This a great thing, a brilliant part of growing up, an incredibly important developmental milestone, and a really big small-footed step towards an adult future of self determination, autonomous control and clarity of communication.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">But for every gorgeous moment we log in the memory bank, our daughter's grasp of toddler language has the ability to throw up an equally horrifying moment, </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">a complete linguistic juxtaposition that has the potential to return your previously stolen heart for a refund and make you feel the polar opposite of warm and fuzzy and happily parental. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">The world of toddler language is peppered with exhaustingly repeated </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">phrases, cranky toddler demands and seemingly innocent signifiers of sheer parental doom; it is the beginning of a whole new, demanding and frustrating world for Mummy and Daddy. Or Dummy and Maddy, depending on how you pronounce things at this stage of your life, and/or how well your verbalised toddler demands have been met. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">I am led to believe that every parent has a list of their top most hated phrases of the week. Maybe that's just wishful thinking, but I like to dream that I'm part of some form of exhausted, grumpy club. Regardless, I press on: here are my top three <em>'don't ever wanna hear em again'</em> phrases for the month, and presumably the year. </span></div>
<br />
<span style="color: yellow; font-family: Verdana;"><strong><span style="color: orange;">ME DO IT</span> </strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">My former cherub lost her cute, fluttery wings the day that she added her high-pitched, cranky 'ME DO IT' to her budding vocab. Everyone warned me about the ME DO IT phase, but no warning could effectively convey the true horror of the ME DO IT months ... oh please tell me it's only months?!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Getting in the car? ME DO IT. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Mummy driving the car? ME DO IT. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Putting pants on? ME DO IT. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Mummy putting lip balm on? ME DO IT. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Daddy cooking dinner on the stove? ME DO IT. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Dog eating a treat? ME DO IT. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Time to vacuum? ME DO IT.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Mummy needs some quiet time. MEEEEE DOOO ITTTT TOOO! </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Mummy running late? MEEEEEE DOOOOOOOOO EVERYTHING! </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Sometimes, I have to admit, it can be a little bit funny. A little bit amusing to watch a cranky mini-me stamp and yell and fume her way indignantly around the kitchen, having a melt down because someone else dared put the lid on her sippy cup on her behalf, or put the towel back on the bathroom rail without her knowledge, or empty the potty without her express permission. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Sometimes, it's deeply intriguing to just sit back and watch; to watch her undo and redo something and then undo it all over again, to try and try and try to do something impossibly difficult just so she can reach the toddler satisfaction nirvana of doing it ALL BY HERSELF. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">But mostly, it's soul-draining exhausting. Day after day, I find myself sitting next to my car, broken, defeated, prohibited from helping, pleading with my mini control freak to please just get in the seat before Mummy loses her final marbles right ... there ... on ... the ... kerb. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="color: orange; font-family: Verdana;"><strong>MUMMY, I DONE A WEE</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">If the wings fell off my cherub when independence rocked in, it's fair to say that the broken wings fell right under the twenty ton toddler truck when toilet training entered the picture. My dreams of a nappy free life were shattered as fast as you can say 'Do you need to go to the potty darling?' </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">My early pipe dreams of a pleasant transition to toilet training land were shot down in a barrage of wet pants, repeat episodes of faux denial, and 'parcels' sent home at the end of the <a href="http://www.mumdanity.com/2014/01/the-hardest-decision-easiest-day.html" target="_blank">daycare</a> day for fumigation. Sure, there have been days of some success, but these are reliably unreliable and always give way to days of intermittent efforts followed by days of apparent toddler vs. toilet stand-off.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">V</span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">ery few things instill fear in me these days like hearing a sweet MUMMY, I DONE A WEE floating through the shared air of a pleasant, well-populated and otherwise hygienic public space. Because nothing says relaxing family day out than finding yourself standing in a puddle of wee with a sodden, foot-stamping toddler screaming ME DO IT and trying to pull their pants off, in the company of a hundred strangers trying to enjoy their Sunday morning coffee and croissant. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">We've read the books, and we've spoken to <a href="http://www.mumdanity.com/2013/10/the-child-care-lottery.html" target="_blank">day care</a>. We've grilled other parents, we've grilled our own parents, and we've spent hours consulting the confused oracle that is Doctor Google. We've tried the little potty and the big toilet, and the big toilet with a little potty modifying device. We've tried cotton undies, and training pants, and no pants. We've tried directing the show with clear instructions, and activating the power of ME DO IT for self directed learning. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">We've employed embarrassing enthusiasm, and nonchalant apathy. We've tried sticker charts, reward stamps, bribery crackers and even the promise of a tropical island holiday when the big girl status achievement is finally unlocked, BAZINGA.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Nope. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">While I've heard plenty of success stories from other parents who's beloved children have managed to hold onto a cherub wing or two and soar their way through potty training as swiftly as germs flying through an indoor play centre, I've also heard plenty of stories like ours. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">I cling to these stories the same way I still cling to solo showers and secret tubs of chocolate macadamia ice cream hidden at the back of the freezer. These stories bring me a much needed sense of universal community - we are not alone, we are not alone, we are not alone ... we're not alone are we?!</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"><strong><span style="color: orange;">UH OH</span></strong> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">The toddler truck has also delivered the magical UH OH to our household. In the early days, crying was bad. Teething was bad. <a href="http://www.mumdanity.com/2013/11/a-parent-in-six-letters.html" target="_blank">Pooplosions </a>were very, very bad. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">These days, UH OH takes the 'oh shit no' cake. Every time those two cute little syllables come wafting down the hallway on the parenting breeze, my heart skips a few shuddery beats. Such a cute, sweet, simple combination words; such a horrible and generally accurate signifier of domestic disaster. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">UH OH has delivered pen drawings all over the couch, and pen engravings in the television cabinet. UH OH has ripped the charger and charging port sheer out of the laptop and pulled the laptop off the couch more times than I want to think. UH OH has poured water in the DVD player. UH OH has broken all the ceramic tea cups that were never permitted to leave the cupboard in the first place. UH OH has explored their dirty nappy with their hands. UH OH has drawn on the novels in the bookcase instead of the paper in the drawing book. UH OH has spilt milk all through Mummy's car and failed to reveal the oopsie until the smell crept into the carpet and tried to kill us all through our nostrils. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">UH OH sometimes means </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Mummy, I've done something so terrifying that you might need to hide in the bathroom and eat potato chips this afternoon until there is enough tinge of dusk creeping across the sky to justify opening the vodka. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">As nasty as it can be, I should qualify: UH OH is infinitely better than its evil stepsister, I FIX IT. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">My advice? If you hear I FIX IT coming down the hall, just go straight for the vodka. Even if it's still breakfast time. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"><strong>What do you never want to hear again?</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">M x</span>Mumdanityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10124926488931146615noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4043883848469177571.post-37521149351327537922015-07-26T01:22:00.004+10:002015-07-26T14:55:51.247+10:00Lights Up and Down the Street<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;"><strong></strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"><strong>8pm, Saturday evening.</strong> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">It's pissing down rain and howling wind like a toddler unwillingly separated from its wilted packet of teddy bear biscuits. A taxi is idling out the front, bleating it's horn at the neighbourhood one impatient honk at a time.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">I briefly wonder who the shitty driver is waiting for. Who in our neighbourhood, our city, our universe, would actually go out at the ungodly hour of 8pm? And in the gusty, squalling rain of all recurrent Melbourne weather atrocities? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">It must be a mistake. A booking error. A slip of the app, an accidental pocket dial from the comfortable oblivion of someone's pocket squashed against the couch in their lounge room. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Surely no one else COULD be ready to go out and socialise at this time of night! </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">What about the kids? What about the wind howling at the roof and the dog howling at the wind? What about the half eaten pasta dish and the cheap bottle of red on the bench? What about the unfolded laundry and the Saturday Night footy and the prospect of a soul shattering 6am Sunday morning start? What about the complete domestic madness that lies ahead? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">The taxi horn squeals again. And I remember.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Other people DO actually go out at 8pm on a Saturday. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Other people, including the couple across the road who don't have kids, and the smiling couple up the street who have growing teenagers and a growing sense of returning parental freedom. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Other people, including the older couple across the road who only see their children at Christmas and when the fence needs repairs, and the seemingly displaced house full of uni students who have strange coloured hair and parties at odd times and make me feel curiously crabby and even more distressingly old. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Other people, including the disparate congregation of men from around the nearby blocks who drift together in their respective sheds for short and long stretches of night to talk about</span><span style="font-family: Verdana;"> beer and the cost of things and the house of uni students and how the umpire got it so very wrong again. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Other people, including the young parents who live further down the block who usually remind us of us, but who actually managed to get it together today and arrange a babysitter, wrangle their child impressively well AND get out of their tracksuit pants. Well played, kids, well played. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Other people, including ourselves on other weekends in the past and still to come, when the preceding weeks have been kinder and the weather has been friendlier and the terrifically terrible twos have been a little less trying for the three of us. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Other people, including the old younger version of me. The old younger me, who would have been waiting for Saturday evening since Monday morning, counting down the work days until the fun days and the sun time until the night time. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">The old younger me, who would have been dressed and heeled and waiting on the front verandah with a flimsily impractical umbrella to fight the herculean tempest,</span><span style="font-family: Verdana;"> impatiently tracking the taxi through the app</span><span style="font-family: Verdana;"> before it even turned into our street. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">The old younger me, </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">waiting w</span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">ith a tiny purse and three pre-drinks tucked under the decorative belt around my <span id="goog_826342078"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/">not-yet-a-mother waist line<span id="goog_826342079"></span></a>, wondering why on earth there were so many lights on up and down the street at 8pm on a Saturday night. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">A door slams and the taxi slides off into time. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"><strong>8:03 pm, Saturday evening.</strong> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Time to fold the laundry. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">M x</span>Mumdanityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10124926488931146615noreply@blogger.com0Melbourne VIC, Australia-37.814107 144.96327999999994-38.6164245 143.67238649999993 -37.0117895 146.25417349999995tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4043883848469177571.post-9022190053217162382015-03-24T10:55:00.000+11:002015-03-27T21:15:08.269+11:00Those Days are These Days<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_eLWtcr3NGHkeLQoinXkWA8PTCdILLOBPeGlghcQYtoI2Yf03GfeGwT9RiE9tBg2iCjP5UTgkskXRZsP16_sDzR6StcWJ9Rc2OjKwz852iFn5f-gijpzqHvIupHTm_geVRp21YGszL0Q/s1600/391491_10151091588738278_1436104981_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_eLWtcr3NGHkeLQoinXkWA8PTCdILLOBPeGlghcQYtoI2Yf03GfeGwT9RiE9tBg2iCjP5UTgkskXRZsP16_sDzR6StcWJ9Rc2OjKwz852iFn5f-gijpzqHvIupHTm_geVRp21YGszL0Q/s1600/391491_10151091588738278_1436104981_n.jpg" height="400" width="400" /></a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I used to dread those days.<br /><br /> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Those impossibly long, soul draining, parental working days. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">You know the ones. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The ones that get underway well before the sun comes up,
where the dog barks and the child screams and the wind blows the outdoor
setting over before the alarm on your mobile phone ever gets a chance to squeal
its morning not-so-glory in your ear.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The ones where you manage to squeeze three hours of morning
preparation into one, managing to layer nail varnish onto the holes in your
last pair of tights whilst co-brushing your teeth with your toddler, making a
mental note to buy more milk whilst simultaneously burning a hole in your ear with your straightening iron. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The ones where you, the toddler and your miraculous holy grail
head of straightened hair run out the front door smack bang into a cyclonic
rain storm, only to find the umbrella is missing: presumed drowned in the
toilet, and replaced with a hyper colour plastic phone and six old sultanas covered
in indistinguishable fluff and grit.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The ones where the daycare drop off leaves you a mooshy mess
of mummy guilt and fluster. The ones where you have to peel your child off your
side in the doorway - like sliding a wedge between two magnets - before making a
guilt-wracked mercy dash in the rain to the bus, the train, the tram, the
overcrowded overpass, that will never get you there on time.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The ones where the barista mistakes your strangled strong
latte request for soy latte. Which won’t matter anyway when you spill two-thirds
of the stuff in your jacket cuff and down your leg as you try and completely
fail to regain some, or any, sense of awesome working person togetherness in
the 12 floors of enforced elevator reprieve you must endure while you run late,
later every morning.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The ones where the email inbox fills up with emails that you
don’t want to contend with, while you stare at the download icon willing the
one email you actually need to make its way through the universe so you can
please, maybe, yes, perhaps, indeed, oh please just get shit done. Before you have to go
back and do the day in reverse again. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The one where you forgot to put your lunchbox in the tea
room fridge, and you are left with a winless choice: a plastic Tupperware container
filled with dubious quality and potential gastric disaster, your toddler’s
afternoon snack box of cracked up crackers, or a maniacal dash to the food court in
the cyclonic rain- which followed you all the way to work and now
menaces from the window, daring you to even try. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The ones where the phone rings incessantly like the mocking
failure bells of side show alley, while you doodle on your notepad and daydream of hanging out at the carnival and riding the ferris wheel as like
you’re twelve again. You’re thirty, how the hell did that happen? And why are
doodling stick flowers and artistically challenged box houses when you have so very much to do?</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The ones where your brain turns to puddles of plush pah
phoo before four, where you drag your holey stockinged legs through the sideways
water bullets to find that the barista has already shut the machine down. And the suit
in front of you made off with the last conceivable chocolate brownie standing,
perfect stockings, umbrella and all. Oh Murphy, you've done it again, top marks for accuracy.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The ones where the transport system grinds to a smashing halt
under the hordes of peak hour crushdom, shuddering along the city streets while
you calculate how many dollars this game of human sardines will cost in <a href="http://www.mumdanity.com/2014/01/the-hardest-decision-easiest-day.html">daycare</a> fines and overtired toddler fees. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The ones where the traffic lights turn every shade but green
as you sit in the thrumming throng, while your toddler melts into a thunderous velociraptor
as the situation of the earlier eaten cracked crackers cracks the evening
universe into a headache that will lodge deep behind your eye - absolutely
cracking and removable only by the power of the weekend and the medication of a
bottle of red. Or three. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The ones where the postie left the bills not the wedding
invites, and the parcel man left the slip not the present from Grandma, but the
dog left the type of terrifying present in the laundry room that you Just. Don’t. Want. To. Know. About. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The ones where you oscillate between serving up toast or
nutritional value, while sneaking Tim Tams from the top of the fridge and
hoping that the pizza gods might arrive on the doorstep and save you from the
triple tears of chopping onions with a toddler by your side, finely diced to
distraction.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The ones where you manage to pull off a dinner with three
finger burns, two vegetables and a side of mash, only to discover that your
toddler now exclusively eats muesli with yoghurt from the red bowl, and
only while sitting on the floor in slippers. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The ones where you read half of seven different bed times
stories, fairies fractured with sea shells mixed with meatballs falling from
the sky onto some kids plate; lulling yourself to sleep while your toddler puts
her plush posse to bed and proceeds to march all over the dying dregs of your
regrettable soy latte experience.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The ones where you lean your head against the ironing board
as the house descends into the sounds of silence, wondering if you managed to
hide some Tim Tams from yourself but knowing deep down in your shattered psyche that you've drained the emergency chocolate bank well beyond dry. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The ones where you finally collapse on the couch, only to remember
that you never got the f$%#ing milk … and now the dog is barking at an
imaginary cat and the toddler is screaming <i>‘twinkle twinkle A B D Muuuuummmy’</i>
and you should probably set the alarm before the sun decides to come back up
all over again. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Yep, I used to dread those days. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Now days though, those days are just these days, and these days
are my days.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">And I wouldn’t change my days for all the non-soy lattes in
the city.</span><b><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Would you?</span></b><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">M x </span><b><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
Mumdanityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10124926488931146615noreply@blogger.com4Melbourne VIC, Australia-37.814107 144.96327999999994-38.6164245 143.67238649999993 -37.0117895 146.25417349999995tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4043883848469177571.post-53027429850700682492014-06-23T14:48:00.001+10:002014-06-23T22:48:16.171+10:00When Life Takes Away Your Lemons<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_HMrn1vmsSNGkFrwgJYI9cH_-zXPzp1UDH-5P1Z8KSfsjMapx17MpqAb8Ve_bLuDvs6j3cLs3Rqy9K6OnrQltRfQM4BeD9iWtM-Vgtrx-M6ReAiNcg-50EM8qZ_6qaQO5UIy4_-vXhIA/s1600/2013-10-12+12.56.52.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_HMrn1vmsSNGkFrwgJYI9cH_-zXPzp1UDH-5P1Z8KSfsjMapx17MpqAb8Ve_bLuDvs6j3cLs3Rqy9K6OnrQltRfQM4BeD9iWtM-Vgtrx-M6ReAiNcg-50EM8qZ_6qaQO5UIy4_-vXhIA/s1600/2013-10-12+12.56.52.jpg" height="225" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em>"When life gives you lemons ..."</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">It's a saying we've all heard. When life gives us proverbial lemons, we crack jokes. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Make lemonade. Ask for sugar and water. Squirt them in people's eyes. Get your friends to bring salt and tequila. Bake a pie. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">We make jokes until we squeeze our way out of our sour situation into sweeter territory (terrible puns intended). But what happens when the situation spins a full 180, reverses right up onto your expectations, and life takes your lemons away instead? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">I recently had the juice knocked out of my tumbler when the universe decided to play havoc with the natural order of destruction, and take away my <a href="http://www.mumdanity.com/2013/10/lemon-aid.html">lemons</a> - and the tree on which the lemons grew, and the backyard in which the tree stood, and the house over which the tree shaded. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The phone call from the landlord came on a nondescript Wednesday afternoon, an unceremonious conversation to announce that our </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">beloved wild backyard was to be turned over the future: a scraggly grass canvas for a blonde-brick two-story townhouse resplendent with shortened eaves, double garage, paved courtyard and secure gun-metal grey letterbox. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It would all have to go - the archaic lemon tree and it's communal bevy of produce, the stone fruit tree that ripened from hard to rotten with no in-between, the swaying verandah frame and it's pepper-holed polycarbonate roofing sheets, and the useless bicycle-part-and-reflector-light scarecrow buried beneath the </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">overgrown lawn. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In the space of one phone call, </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I was brought back down to the reality that I was a tenant and not a home-owner, perched precariously in someone else's house at the permission of their contractual obligations and the mercy of their lifestyle choices, mortgage repayments and blonde-brick two-story townhouse dreams.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">More the point, I was brought crashing down to the reality that we would have to move house. Again. With a dog. And a toddler. And three bedrooms full of furniture and cloth nappies and singing walkers and the general accumulated crap of two exhausted parents and a miniature hoarder with a penchant for shiny objects. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">There was shock. There was panic. There was anger. There was extreme ranting at my husband, who looked like he might quite like to move house all by himself just to get away from me for a while. Then there was sweet, sweet denial.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">The denial phase was kind to us. We had visitors from interstate, we potted plants in the yard, we bought more crap that would eventually have to move house with us, and our daughter even managed to turn one, complete with a coming of age tricycle and number one birthday cake. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">And so it was that we found ourselves </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">knee deep in the aftermath of first birthday celebrations, covered in sticky green icing and crumpled wrapping paper, when the tree loppers arrived to exterminate the backyard and our ability to ignore the situation any longer. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">The sound was horrific, much like a toddler squealing their dissatisfaction with the removal of their favourite toy, or a labouring woman expressing her vehement disagreement with her partner's decision to sit down for a quick cuppa and ham and tomato sandwich in the middle of transition.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">After several hours of auditory torture, the tree lopping crew and the trees were gone, and with them, the sense of home. Without the trees, without the lemons, without the sun dappled light and the scratchy leaves and the boughing branches banging on the window, our rambling old terrace was nothing but an old house that belonged to someone else - </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">crumbling mortar, sagging front door, cracked pavement, broken lattice, haggard tree stumps and an unshakeable tendency toward shedding dust and attracting ants. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Inspired by the devastation, we packed up our denial and our belongings and got out of there as quickly as we could. One truck, fifteen car trips, seven million trailer loads, and only a handful of tears and swear words, and we have successfully transplanted ourselves into another inner-outer-inner suburb, with the dog and toddler and tricycle all still (relatively) intact. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">We don't have any lemons anymore, or a magnificent old lemon tree in a ramshackle old yard to shade under in the summer months. But we do have a giant olive tree out the front of the new place that looks like it's going to deliver in abundance. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Tapenade, anyone? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">M x </span>Mumdanityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10124926488931146615noreply@blogger.com3Melbourne VIC, Australia-37.814107 144.96327999999994-38.6164245 143.67238649999993 -37.0117895 146.25417349999995tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4043883848469177571.post-90289836641033324492014-05-10T08:33:00.001+10:002014-05-10T08:33:25.226+10:00International Blog Swap Day 2014 - A Bloggy Blind Date with Cookies and Cwtches<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.tots100.co.uk/2014/04/30/international-blog-swap-day-meet-the-bloggers/"><img alt="http://www.tots100.co.uk/2014/04/30/international-blog-swap-day-meet-the-bloggers/" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1g0z4sd640Gw2L0WpEpfOv0Hs_vN-6sembmSx3zlIq_gojV3DUGqHL3gRrqOC67mdp1C9ULkt593p_HnzIBCQ1yC7KxmJZu328JN5KhcgTfgI18XXwS9_1akp3mx2ZpnJPvQeQfkF7tY/s1600/IBSDlogo.jpg" height="277" width="400" /></a></div>
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em></em></span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em></em></span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em>It's International Blog Swap Day, and I'm lucky enough to have been partnered up and sent on a bloggy 'blind date' with the delightful Lina from Cookies and Cwtches. T</em></span></span><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em>o mark the occasion, Lina has a written a special guest post! </em></span></span><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em>To really put the swap in International Blog Swap Day, I will be blogging over at Cookies and Cwtches today as well, make sure you head over to say g'day.</em></span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Hi I’m Lina and I blog over at <a href="http://cookiesandcwtches.com/">Cookies and Cwtches</a>. Cwtches</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> is the
Welsh word for cuddle or hug! I am 32 and a mummy to two little girls aged 7
and 3 and have another little one due in a couple of months. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">As I’m writing this post for International
Blog Swap Day I thought I would just introduce myself, my blog and tell you a
little bit about me.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">I live in a small town in Wales although I
was born and grew up in London. Moving to Wales was a big change for me – there
is much more countryside, the people are nicer and the houses are much cheaper
than I was used to in London! I think Wales is a really nice area for children
to grow up but I do get homesick for the hustle and bustle of London sometimes!
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I started my blog because I love writing,
and thought it would be a great record of my children’s growing up years. I
write a lot about parenting in general as well as our little family memories
too. I also really enjoy cooking and crafts and like to record recipes and our
craft activities on the blog as well as share these ideas with other people who
may be reading. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">To give you an idea of what I like to write
about here are some links to some of my more popular posts…<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-DWwvK6FCCEYAKOWBy2vpX4CbySDLwiflGVf2qm6osiJsCvdTjmy5AErhpq92fx4NjC1K-Fwop4o2YVPr7LnXS5z57JzP2Hgbh-ZoNjTH8bFhGB7ytuU9_G6z2lzKjK8swPrZevALs4I/s1600/Adribblebib.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="http://cookiesandcwtches.com/my-first-pdf-downloadable-pattern/"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-DWwvK6FCCEYAKOWBy2vpX4CbySDLwiflGVf2qm6osiJsCvdTjmy5AErhpq92fx4NjC1K-Fwop4o2YVPr7LnXS5z57JzP2Hgbh-ZoNjTH8bFhGB7ytuU9_G6z2lzKjK8swPrZevALs4I/s1600/Adribblebib.jpg" height="200" title="" width="200" /></a> <a href="http://cookiesandcwtches.com/recipe-healthy-smoothie-ice-lollies/"><img alt="http://cookiesandcwtches.com/recipe-healthy-smoothie-ice-lollies/" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinUgCCwM9n-71pEzcbbJcRKbKYZdCfo5Onlr8h9VnHnswxgMLO1BS906LljPBbqH3pt0FjkzTGYYwz43cQA6P4x0SStDwm2xXP5GJc_Ym7wfJs8cSvFDKYIXjA7UG1_ih0PdrEz5G7gQE/s1600/Ahealthysmoothie.jpg" height="200" width="200" /></a> <a href="http://cookiesandcwtches.com/nursery-ideas/"><img alt="http://cookiesandcwtches.com/nursery-ideas/" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnZqjwm4BxMEC11p6KqhYS1KFu3mpIwqKqS__jOj7uEc6vMimUHY3FnFPSevdukWzIfrRTuyOsWB0iEz-NR7_ft854AThaXDyKTz1w8krZHwPENJTL9xhl3zL3gLmiKaxhEKyIpJw0Lqg/s1600/ANurseryIdeas.jpg" height="200" width="200" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A big thank you to Mumdanity for hosting my
post…do pop over to my blog where she will be writing a guest post of her own. </span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Thanks to Lina for her post - head on over to her <a href="http://cookiesandcwtches.com/">blog</a> too!</i></span></span></div>
Mumdanityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10124926488931146615noreply@blogger.com0Melbourne VIC, Australia-37.814107 144.96327999999994-38.6164245 143.67238649999993 -37.0117895 146.25417349999995tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4043883848469177571.post-61275296764912880712014-04-03T14:14:00.000+11:002014-05-03T20:13:32.401+10:00The Wintry Side of the Equation <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDs9NF88tgnALMbTcfaUfmtwcSpEL_RiSawzOdqIxIRtZCyLDMI7EP3IaYjzbvYufKzrTRCcsqrVUPWdnFpqWTVdFJ3KD6pSN74Ka0O5A4ft6P2_b9PB37pZO0atPG5ndNpzanlUpHzxM/s1600/fireplace.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDs9NF88tgnALMbTcfaUfmtwcSpEL_RiSawzOdqIxIRtZCyLDMI7EP3IaYjzbvYufKzrTRCcsqrVUPWdnFpqWTVdFJ3KD6pSN74Ka0O5A4ft6P2_b9PB37pZO0atPG5ndNpzanlUpHzxM/s1600/fireplace.jpg" height="267" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It's been nearly two months now since I slipped into the exhausting slipstream thick of <a href="http://www.mumdanity.com/2014/02/time-and-biscuits.html">working-mum life</a>. Most of the life dust has settled, but I am struggling to find out exactly where the time has gone, and where the halves of all the sad and single socks in our neglected washing basket have buggered off to. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Somewhere, between reclaiming my work
skirts from the back of the wardrobe and trying to source, chop, crumb,
bake and pleadingly squeeze zucchini sticks into an eleven month old
each evening, the trademark Australian summer days have shifted toward the wintery side of
the annual equation. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In true transitional fashion, we are still getting a smattering of hot days wedged in among the cold ones, but they are fast becoming the warm exception to the chilly rule, like finding a prized full noodle in a packet of resolutely broken ones. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For the most part, though, the long rambling evenings of the summer months have given way to the crisp mornings of April, and the train station platform has seen a resurgence of black tights, well-loved boots and mid-length coats topped off with football scarves. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Our cold dinners have given way to casseroles, fish and chips at the beach have been replaced with fish and chips on the lounge room floor, and picnics in the park are teetering indecisively on the precipice of seasonal give. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In the same vein, the tantalizing waft of summer barbecues has been phased out by the acrid smell of wood fire smoke, piping from a medley of disparate chimneys as fireplaces are cleaned and test-fired in readiness for the battle of the temperatures that lies ahead. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The leaves are starting to switch on the trees, going out in sympathy with the browning grass and the gnarling twigs, ready to peter out as daylight savings does and fall to the footpath when the first windscreens ice up in the morning. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My <a href="http://www.mumdanity.com/2013/10/lemon-aid.html">crumbling old house</a> in the inner-outer-inner suburbs of Melbourne is also showing the signs of the season, with the last good <a href="http://www.mumdanity.com/2013/10/lemon-aid.html">lemons</a> throwing themselves from the tree and the cobwebs closing in on the windows that no longer need to be opened. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">To protest the shift in the the weather, a small but formidable army of mice have found their way through the cracks, making a mockery of the endless deficiencies in our antique door seals and off-kilter walls and skirting boards. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The washing machine is now full of
sturdy toddler trousers, footed pajamas and corporate shift dresses and tights - a
far cry from the primary colour carnival of short-sleeve onesies, cotton nappy covers and sensible breastfeeding singlets that have been swallowed up by the missing weeks. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The seasonal shift has even got the washing line preparing for hibernation, catching its last few weeks of relatively useful sun before it will be forced to slink off into a cool grey corner of the backyard for the duration of the lacklustre-laundry winter months. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Somewhere, somehow, summer has turned to autumn, new year has turned to mid year, <a href="http://www.mumdanity.com/2014/01/the-hardest-decision-easiest-day.html">daycare</a> has turned from new to routine, bottles have turned to cups, crawling has turned to stepping, fast has turned to much faster and I still can't find a pair of matching socks - and by time time I do, my daughter will have outgrown them anyway! </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Has time crept up on you lately?</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">M x </span>Mumdanityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10124926488931146615noreply@blogger.com0Melbourne VIC, Australia-37.814107 144.96327999999994-38.6164245 143.67238649999993 -37.0117895 146.25417349999995tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4043883848469177571.post-52649951326613068852014-02-28T23:37:00.000+11:002014-03-01T10:22:18.645+11:00Time and Biscuits <br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2WRvw5jcn-Gnc8OISANnCqKrIRKoPiVReuk-TsypUsVs053wWPxmJQy9J-c3RHY_V3iFzimFaSbtxVkWp6EXXczRv9TJFdqT1BSv5lA-VPTDN_QW0FWN8yVEG2OmtMApQgWC-tyw4DtU/s1600/DSC_0009+1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2WRvw5jcn-Gnc8OISANnCqKrIRKoPiVReuk-TsypUsVs053wWPxmJQy9J-c3RHY_V3iFzimFaSbtxVkWp6EXXczRv9TJFdqT1BSv5lA-VPTDN_QW0FWN8yVEG2OmtMApQgWC-tyw4DtU/s1600/DSC_0009+1.JPG" height="400" width="267" /></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It's been a few non-alcoholic drinks between posts, but I'm back and flumped on the good old blogging couch, recovering from my first foray into the working mummy world. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">After a year in the twenty-four-seven parenting game, with teethers and tantrums and teddies (and tearing out my brittle hair with alarming frequency and effectiveness), I was ready and almost excitedly waiting for my return to work to herald an upheaval of epic proportions. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Prepared to be swallowed whole by the real world and seventeen thousand red-flagged emails, I put on a skirt, jammed some breastpads down my bra, wiped the toast from my blouse, grabbed a child unfriendly muesli bar and slobber-free water bottle and retraced the steps of my previous life to the train station. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Stepping back through the grimy doors of the morning peak hour train turned out to be an unpleasantly pleasant letdown, like a return to the same point in the mundane romance novel I had completely forgotten I was reading last year. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For the most part, it appears the same cast of characters from my previous life chapter are all still on stage and ready for the next sector of my working journey - appropriately sleepy, hairsprayed, briefcased, toothpasted, headphoned and jaded. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The key players are still there, playing their parts. The angry girl who somehow manages to squeeze goth streetwear into the conformity of nine-to-five office attire. The mousey haired woman with the eternally crumpled jacket and sensible lunch bag. The obnoxious bicycle man with the exceptionally oversized backpack. The guy with the epic collection of fantasy novels. And the usual cluster of Carriage Seven school girls decked out in blue and white and stripe and straw. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Despite the slap of a bitter winter and a long scorching summer, the train still bucks just the same way on the tracks that it always did. The ticket machines malfunction just as frequently, the wind still rips through the station overhang with the same ferocity, the tram dings the same way it always has, and the coffee place halfway between the tram and the office still takes as inhumanly long as isn't really possible to make a short latte on the run. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Time has passed and the calendar has come full circle, but the time warp has found its way into the office as well. Colleagues have come and gone, the phone system has been replaced, and the cream biscuits in the communal kitchen tin have sadly been replaced by plain - but the calls still come and the issues still run and the fluorescent lights still flicker just the same. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My business cards are still in the second desk drawer, along with a forgotten pump pack of moisturiser, silver coins leftover from the ghost of coffees past, and a pile of long-forgotten filing tattooed with my trademark scrawling sticky notes and bent paperclips. Evidence that I did exist here once before, and that my pregnancy brain was in full swing when I packed up my desk a year ago. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Somehow, right through the soul shattering screaming match of birth and the sleep deprivation of early parenthood, my ability to function behind a desk and my recall of procedures and protocols and important calendar dates and phone extension numbers has remained intact. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Even my name has been retained in the complicated new phone system, which I have no idea how to use, almost as if my parallel self was there in the office all along while I wasn't. Or was I? </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It feels eerily like I've walked back into a parallel universe, one that was mine and is mine, but actually wasn't and isn't and won't be mine at all, even if the cream biscuits are returned to their rightful tin. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span> Sitting at my old desk, trying to feel current, trying to pick reality from real, it is plain that while some elements of my universe are identical to how they used to be, others have flown the coop and have no intention of ever coming back down from the big blue sky. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Belonging and longing have become two entirely separate but identical things, divided into a smattering of small segments that can never be put back together the way that they started, but will also somehow be one and the very same. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">If it wasn't for the exploding boobs
and the desperate need to pick up some carrots and teething gel and make
it to the childcare centre by six, I could almost get sucked into the
time warp and let belonging and longing rest together in the filing cabinet until 5pm. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Almost, almost, nearly. But not quite.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Have you discovered any parallel universes on your parenting journey? I'd love to hear your stories.</b> </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">M x </span></span> </span><br />
<br />Mumdanityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10124926488931146615noreply@blogger.com0Melbourne VIC, Australia-37.814107 144.96327999999994-38.6164245 143.67238649999993 -37.0117895 146.25417349999995tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4043883848469177571.post-24386729227382507822014-02-23T12:08:00.002+11:002014-02-23T12:08:50.462+11:00Silent Sunday: 23.02.2014<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGqT8UBkuk4XUm3kU25qQT-15-sewMxN69k6xpYd3MEO-4bcCmVBSgkSi2UAm7pEV2cBXkhgrMs_gmlX5e6Efj653D7Q1zQoprf8VKLn8fzoO1hpQ6eVecf9nNyRH6SRW09nhJ39_RNDY/s1600/2014-02-23+11.58.06.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGqT8UBkuk4XUm3kU25qQT-15-sewMxN69k6xpYd3MEO-4bcCmVBSgkSi2UAm7pEV2cBXkhgrMs_gmlX5e6Efj653D7Q1zQoprf8VKLn8fzoO1hpQ6eVecf9nNyRH6SRW09nhJ39_RNDY/s1600/2014-02-23+11.58.06.png" height="277.2" width="460.8" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.cosmicgirlie.com/silent-sunday/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /><br /><img alt="" src="http://www.cosmicgirlie.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Silent-Sunday.jpg" /></a></div>
<a href="http://www.cosmicgirlie.com/silent-sunday/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a>Mumdanityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10124926488931146615noreply@blogger.com3Melbourne VIC, Australia-37.814107 144.96327999999994-38.6164245 143.67238649999993 -37.0117895 146.25417349999995tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4043883848469177571.post-14394345236987993362014-02-14T21:35:00.002+11:002014-02-15T09:37:44.033+11:00A Little Spot of Romance <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Not yet seven and the baby's screaming -</span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />good morning anyway, my tired Valentine.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Disheveled and sweaty in the least sexy way,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">but I'm terribly glad we are yours and mine.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Please shut that superfluous alarm up,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">it's trashing our orchestra of screams;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">too late, the romance is playing dead, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">gone to dally with quiet morning dreams. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">We're up, she's up, the house is up,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Cupid, why can't we all just be down?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The dog is barking into the cacophony,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">we must be waking up the entire town. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I think there's fresh clothes on the floor, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">definitely dirty dishes looking for a clean;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">yes, I know the household is a bit askew,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I'm going for the on-trend ramshackle lean. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Watch yourself, my coffee slurping Valentine, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Mini Cupidess just put weetbix on your shirt;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">don't worry, rub it in with the banana gunk</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">And the miscellaneous congregated baby dirt. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Now I got you a card, all glittering and cheap,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Picked with love and thrift at the grocery store;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">goodbye, take the garbage on your way out, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">There's no room in the kitchen bin anymore.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Naps, no naps, and tipped up sippy cups, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">avocado painting on the high chair seat; </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">high time to inhale a bag of gummy bears,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Mummy's sneaky own Valentine's treat. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The dog's attacking the kitchen door again,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">and balance has left the washing machine;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I'll let the mop make out with the broom</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">and leave tomorrow to work on being clean.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Hello, can you hear me, are you in the car, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">can you pick up more loo paper on the way?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I'll put the baby down and then we'll have </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">our shortened parental style Valentine's Day. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Carbonara, wine, some parmesan cheese,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">And three candles on the television stand;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">not the classiest restaurant in the suburb</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">but ample quality for exhausted demand. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Documentary down and lounge lamp on low,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">there's enough time for a spot of romance yet;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">no, you're not imagining it, the baby's awake,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">that wine is as lucky as you're going to get. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Let's go to bed with a synchronized flump,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">to pass out cold as we both just need to do;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">let all the energetic love birds eat our dinner,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">while we sleep and snore and love me and you. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><b>What is your Valentine's Day story? </b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">M x </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></span>Mumdanityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10124926488931146615noreply@blogger.com0Melbourne VIC, Australia-37.814107 144.96327999999994-38.6164245 143.67238649999993 -37.0117895 146.25417349999995tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4043883848469177571.post-10256171661462104242014-02-09T12:09:00.000+11:002014-02-09T14:37:06.050+11:00Silent Sunday: 09.02.2014<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://www.cosmicgirlie.com/silent-sunday/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a>Mumdanityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10124926488931146615noreply@blogger.com8Melbourne VIC, Australia-37.814107 144.96327999999994-38.6164245 143.67238649999993 -37.0117895 146.25417349999995tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4043883848469177571.post-57918180691028241372014-02-04T12:26:00.001+11:002015-07-30T14:42:46.162+10:00The Philosophy of In-Between<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />Everything we do in our lives is underpinned by something else - by our circumstances, our individual histories, our beliefs, our passions, our guiding principles, and the underlying framework of philosophies we have picked up and crafted along the way.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">With personal philosophies being such individual works of art, constructed over many years with the paint of life and some random glitter and paddle pop sticks, it is fair to contend that no two philosophical outlooks are the same. <br /><br />Some people I know have a firm 'less is more' outlook on the world, while others believe success is measured by the volume of stuff we can fit in our wardrobes and under our beds. <br /><br />Some individuals operate on the basis that we should always look before we leap, while others give the most credence to digging in and getting covered in elbow grease, or eating their cake and having it too, or always thinking the worst to ensure they cut any possible disappointment off at the pass. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As can be seen from a quick tour of the personal philosophy gallery, our inner minds are all individual mixed bags, peppered with the random scrapings and tidbits left on the serving spoon after we've dished up the best our grey matter has to offer. <br /><br />While there is plenty of philosophical debris flying around my mental cavity, every decision I make oscillates around the same immovable philosophy that has weathered the emotional roller coaster of my being, and the tumultuous climb of my teenage years and twenties: <strong>the philosophy of in-between</strong>. <br /><br />My kid mind was introduced to the foundational milk crates of the philosophy of in-between by my grade five teacher, Mrs C, who specalised in delivering real-life lessons with a booming primary teachers voice, a perpetual waft of stale cigarette smoke, and an unjaded - unjadable - twinkle in her eye. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Mrs C was that amazing teacher you always wanted and never had. She left a fifty dollar note on her desk on the first day of the year and picked it up again on the last, leaving an unspoken lesson of trust in its place. She photocopied her weekend newspapers and taught us how to complete cryptic crosswords as well as close passages, a skill that I still lean on every time I wait in a departure lounge or have breakfast at a cafe. <br /><br />She took maths problems off the board and turned them into blocks and books and other physical equations, and took book reviews and creative writing to whole new levels I never previously conceived possible. She took my ability to write and turned it into a passion for words, and an almost terrifying worship of crisp scented, freshly purchased library books. <br /><br />Most importantly, though, even above the fifty dollar note of trust and the ability to detect an anagram in an apparently innocuous crossword clue, Mrs C imparted the wisdom that allowed me to unearth the philosophy of in-between. <br /><br />True to her no-bullshit-but-eternally-cryptic style, she delivered the guts of the philosophy wrapped up in a discussion about our impending transition from gangly primary school kids to impressively cool-cat high school students.<br /><br />She explained that during the six week space i</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">n-between the end of primary school and the beginning of high school, we would become high schoolers: we would cease to be children and immediately become teenagers, with highly effective legs and impressive waterproof capabilities that would miraculously allow rain to roll off us just like water off a ducks back. <br /><br /> We would no longer need to catch the bus to school or get a lift to our friends house two blocks over. We would also no longer need to be dropped off at the school gates or picked up from the basketball courts when it rained, and no longer have any practical use for umbrellas or raincoats or plastic ponchos or sensible coats. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">While most of the class giggled and turned back to their maths equations, eager to secure an early mark through being the first to return their correctly completed answer sheet to the front, my analytical little mind went into overdrive. <br /><br />Hidden within the important lecture about my impending magical transformation into a high school duck, I had uncovered the philosophy of in-between: </span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">somehow, somewhere, in-between one momentous occasion in our lives and the next, we will always find it within ourselves to adapt and carry on.</span> </span> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />The philosophy of in-between hit me like a ton of happy bricks, heavy with the previously unimagined lifetime of changes, possiblities and endless versions of myself. This was mind blowing stuff for an eleven year old, who previously hadn't thought much beyond the grade six farewell dance and the end of year dance concert. <br /><br />I went into cogitation meltdown: if we humans could change in the mere breaths in-between primary school and high school, then we humans (and me, could obviously change in-between other milestones too. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For the very first time, I became aware that I would actually change as I grew, instead of just getting taller and bigger and older and wrinklier. The continual ebb and flow of circumstance and scenario would unintentionally change me, and the continual ebb and flow of me would change to deliberately affect circumstance and shift scenarios as well. <br /><br />There were light bulbs flicking on and burning out everywhere. I would change in-between my first kiss and my second, I would change in-between finishing the flag wade era at Nippers and starting the surf swim years, I would change in-between being allowed to go the shopping centre by myself for the first time and deciding to make my very own independent purchase, and I would change in-between learning to drive and being allowed to take the car out on the road solo for the first time. <br /><br />This was mental gold, and I quickly adopted the idea as my own personal philosophy. Like the best play dough squashed deep within the carpet fibres, it has stuck with me ever since and thankfully served me very well, seeing me through all the big bumps and railway crossings and terrible green curries of life without ever letting me down. <br /><br />The philosophy rang true in-between finishing high school and starting university, when I changed from being an energetic high school kid with delusions of future grandeur to a fiercely realistic first year with just enough cash for a cheap floor fan and a five-pack of Mi-Goreng noodles. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The philosophy was out in force when my husband and I made the transition from the country to <a href="http://www.mumdanity.com/2013/10/lemon-aid.html">inner-outer-inner suburban</a> Melbourne a few years ago, with my inner country girl (mostly) adapting overnight to the twenty-four-seven mayhem and buzz, built from an endless procession of trams and trains and taxis and takeaway joints. <br /><br />The philosophy's 'carry on' attitude rang in my ears while I adjusted to the omnipresent street lights and being able to hear my neighbours talking through the bedroom wall, and catching public transport to work every day and crossing the road with hundreds of strangers pressing against my shoulders.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />Not to be ousted with the move, the philosophy kept me company again in-between <a href="http://www.mumdanity.com/2013/11/a-thorny-truth.html" target="_blank">losing my first pregnancy</a> and deciding to try again; I shifted and changed in ways I didn't even know possible, growing harder and softer, hotter and colder, younger and older, all at the same sad yet unavoidable time.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The marathon of pregnancy challenged the philosophy time and exhausting time again, but somehow it stood firm, with my body adapting and then re-adapting to meet the growing needs and demands of my mushrooming on-board monster - morning sickness, water retention, leaky bladder, frightfully blooming breasts and prolific weight gain included. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />The philosophy really came into it's own in the short but important space in-between the screaming throes of labour (did someone say never, ever again?!) and the first night feed in the maternity ward. In that small window of time, when the world and my hormones and the screaming baby and the very friendly midwives required me to change more than I ever had before, I pulled on all reserves I didn't know I had, and I charged on through the adaptation wall. <br /><br />In the space of a single wheelchair ride to the ward, I forever changed from being a puffy, sweaty pregnant lady to being a MUM, who could stay awake for days at a time and change a nappy and <a href="http://www.mumdanity.com/2013/10/unnaturally-natural.html" target="_blank">try and breastfeed</a> and hold my water bottle and nipple shield in my teeth and still feel (relatively) happy and in love. <br /><br />In-between being discharged from the hospital and coming to grips with being a stay-at-home mother, in-between wanting to sleep and realising my baby didn't, in-between wanting to clean the house and needing to feed the baby, in-between my baby learning to sit up and my baby learning to crawl, in-between sending my baby to daycare two days a week and deciding to re-enter the workforce, I adapted - like we must, and we will, and we do. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />It's tiring, this adaptation business. When I think I can't possibly adapt anymore, when I am bursting at the seams with frustration and exhaustion and hanging out for a glass of white wine and twelve months of motionless, stagnant reality, I remember my philosophy: in-between the moments, we will always find it within ourselves to adapt, and we will always carry on. <br /><b></b><b><br />What are your personal philosophies? <br />What drives you forward every day? </b><br /><br />M x </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><strong></strong><b></b></span></span>
<a href="http://honestmum.com/category/brilliant-blog-posts/"><img alt="Brilliant blog posts on HonestMum.com" src="http://i.imgur.com/fJzNWoE.jpg" height="189" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="301" /></a>Mumdanityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10124926488931146615noreply@blogger.com0Melbourne VIC, Australia-37.814107 144.96327999999994-38.6164245 143.67238649999993 -37.0117895 146.25417349999995tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4043883848469177571.post-66591741219548923022014-02-02T14:29:00.000+11:002014-02-02T14:30:44.548+11:00Silent Sunday: 02.02.2014<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Mumdanityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10124926488931146615noreply@blogger.com25Melbourne VIC, Australia-37.814107 144.96327999999994-38.6164245 143.67238649999993 -37.0117895 146.25417349999995tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4043883848469177571.post-60917820322695285472014-01-31T20:27:00.000+11:002015-03-27T19:31:10.510+11:00Underneath the Fever <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />When my daughter <a href="http://www.mumdanity.com/2014/01/the-hardest-decision-easiest-day.html">started child care</a> earlier this month, I knew that we would be up against a steady wave of daycare ailments and illnesses, resplendent and resilient in all their combined snotty, sniffly, snuffly glory. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">While I am not entirely naive, my first-time-mummy-self optimistically believed there would be an adjustment period, a blissful and relatively sustained snot-free time in the sand box before the first illness set in. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Over my morning cups of sleepy coffee and cogitation, I always imagined my daughter's immune defenses to be nothing short of a solid wall, carefully constructed from nine months of exclusive <a href="http://www.mumdanity.com/2013/10/unnaturally-natural.html">breastfeeding</a> bricks and iron-fortified cereal mortar. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Every day, I would wrap my hands around the coffee cup, warming my fingers and the cockles of my naivety with the happy notion that it would take weeks, months, maybe even years, for the nasty viruses of the childcare world to chip away at that impressive wall. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I was delusional. Downright - stark raving, looney-tune, kilo bag of mixed salted nuts, dancing by myself on the side of the road in my worst holey underwear, seeing Bette Midler and Hugh Grant buying crumpets in a Melbourne supermarket, eating chalk seasoned with toothpaste for dinner - DELUSIONAL. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Perhaps I drank too much coffee, or too few cups of the stuff, but I can openly confess that the great wall of baby immunity that I had built in my head was nothing but a shimmering mirage in a mental desert of exhausted parenting madness. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It took all of two short days in care for my previously non-snotty daughter to lick the communal toys, lick some stolen sippy cups, and presumably lick the other babies and the educators and the nursery floor as well, and pick up her first unidentified daycare malady. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />The first sign of the unwelcome bug was when the baby's nose started to run away with itself - but much like with a nest of white ants, the framework was damaged beyond repair by the time the work showed itself on the surface. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The opening days of the illness parade were uneventful: snot, snot and more snot, with a bit of grumbling and a lot of forcefully refuted saline spraying, nasal suctioning and unavoidable nose wiping. <br /><br />The fanfare kicked up a notch about the time we ran out of tissues, when my daughter's liquid leak took on a distinctive indistinct yellow-greenish hue (the one time you really don't want to be wearing the Australian sporting colours), and the bug also jumped ship and took up residence in my nose and throat. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Things became unpleasant. I was hot and sweaty and grumpy, and so was the baby. Our heads were abuzz with aches and thumps and the house was floating in an unpleasant haze of toxic little tissue parcels and lethargy. We couched, with Peppa Pig and Hootabelle and Elmo and all his friends filling the inevitable void. <br /><br />Proving faithful old Murphy was still hard at work down at the law firm even while we were lazing about on our sick beds, my darling little liquid-leaker chose the height of our fuzzy head-cold woozies to become completely and hysterically terrified of all things sneezing, and all things nose blowing. <br /><br />Every sneeze elicited an intense bout of screaming, accompanied by the angry kicking of little feet against the carpet. Every nose blown into a tissue, whether it was a petite little exhale of negligible proportions or a thunderously productive and powerful achoo, resulted in the baby turning red, scrunching up her face in the most unpleasant manner and squealing at the highest possible volume on her inbuilt speaker. <br /><br />Just as the malady parade reached fever pitch, and the balloons started to drift off into the sky to make an environmentally unfriendly mess somewhere else, the whole icky parade switched direction. <br /><br />Out of the snot and the fever and the aching legs, out of the tissue wasteland and the leaking bottles of baby paracetamol with adult-proof-child-safe caps, came a completely unexpected and virulent bout of mutant daycare bug gastro. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />Without any warning whatsoever, I was plunged into an abyss of throwing up into a bucket while trying to sing nursery rhymes and change the batteries in a malfunctioning, off key musical toy lion covered in cracker crumbs and snot. <br /><br />Worse than the head-breaking lion was the unavoidable and instantaneous realisation that throwing up is far higher </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">on the baby
noise terror scale than the mere trifling sounds of sneezing and nose
blowing. For every dalliance with the bucket, my daughter would issue forth a blood-curdling scream that would send me back to the bucket, a circle so unpleasant it can't be painted with words. </span><br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">With my husband interstate and my family very far away, I was left without back-up, looking hopefully at the crack of light coming from the back of the television, and pleading with the universe for a box of electrolyte lollipops and a wet face washer. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Clutching onto some ice cubes and the dying tendrils of my dignity, I slowly scrounged up the walls of abyss, changing nappies and wiping noses and preparing finger foods and running baths and singing bedtime songs and throwing up (quietly) and reading <i>Where is the Green Sheep</i>, wishing it was anywhere else in the universe but here. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Where once I would have curled up into a ball and focused on stillness, feeling atrociously sorry for myself, I jumped right into the ugly wave of sea sickness and sploshed around until there was nothing left in my stomach, and my daughter was fed, washed, giggled, crawled, storied and asleep.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It was horrible, and it was painful,
and it was brilliantly colourful in the greyest of ways, but I managed to muddle through
and come out the other side - and that, right there, is the underlying magic of parenting. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />It's the ugliest and strongest kind of magic, the one hidden between the sweaty bed clothes, the one floundering around listlessly at the bottom of the toilet bowl. It's the type of magic</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> that makes you all warm and fuzzy (and potentially feverish, depending
on the intensity of the ailment) and sends your ovaries into a little spin and rinse cycle when you least expect it. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />It's the magic that propels mothers to simultaneously fix mechanical lions and throw up in buckets, and makes fathers stay awake at night when they are interstate, and helps parents find the energy to become parents again and again and again. <br /><br />It's the magic that gets you up at midnight and three in the morning and again at quarter to five, and it's the non-sparkly fairy dust that falls from the sky and keeps you going, through and beyond the eleventh napless day in a row. <br /><br />It's the force that sees you change nappies that would be better attacked with a fire hose, and gives you the extra soul points to get you through <i>another</i> rendition of Old MacDonald Had a Farm, and the only reason that you agree to spend every happy hour dicing up finger food in the kitchen instead of hightailing it down to the bar for a cold mojito and share plate. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />It's the reason people without children think about switching out Sundays down at the pub for Sundays down at the park, and the spare room for a nursery, and sleep-ins for just a few minutes of plain old sleep - it's the reason, even though those people don't actually know that the magic exists just yet. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">David Frost once said:</span><i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Love is staying up all night with a sick child - or healthy adult."</span></i> Having just had my heart on my fluffy dressing gown sleeve and my sleep on hold for the better part of a very long and snotty fortnight, I couldn't agree more. </span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">How do you get through the sick days at your house? <br />Where do you find the magic? </span></b><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">M x </span>
<a href="http://honestmum.com/category/brilliant-blog-posts/"><img style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; display: block;" src="http://i.imgur.com/fJzNWoE.jpg" alt="Brilliant blog posts on HonestMum.com" width="301" height="189" /></a>Mumdanityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10124926488931146615noreply@blogger.com6Melbourne VIC, Australia-37.814107 144.96327999999994-38.6164245 143.67238649999993 -37.0117895 146.25417349999995tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4043883848469177571.post-4544625302122234072014-01-20T11:58:00.000+11:002014-01-20T19:05:20.397+11:00Game, Set, Couch <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />With the recent <a href="http://www.mumdanity.com/2014/01/meltdown.html">heatwave</a> done and dusted, it's finally cool enough to settle back down onto the couch and into my favourite summer sport: watching the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Open">Australian Open</a> on telly. <br /><br />To some, the Open is just another tennis tournament, a televised parade of extremely fit people hitting a small fuzzy ball from one end of a court to another, mixed up with a pastiche of grunting, drink sipping and towel wiping. <br /><br />To others, like myself, the Open is the holy grail of the summer experience. It is better than lazy days at the <a href="http://www.mumdanity.com/2013/10/the-giant-concrete-puddle.html">swimming pool</a> or keeping cool in the frozen section of the supermarket, and right up there with having your significant other scrub the shower and toilet while you take a sneaky afternoon nap.<br /><br />There is something quintessentially Australian about lying spreadeagled on the couch under a pedestal fan, with remote and beverage in hand, yelling swathes of ocker encouragement and dismay at the players, and grunting in perpetual disagreement with the umpire. <br /><br />There is something even more iconically Australian about catching an overloaded tram to Melbourne Park and sweating through a five-setter on an unshaded outside court for four hours, with only an expensive hot dog and your ground pass for sustenance. <br /><br />It's oddly addictive, this Open watching business, a sweaty fortnight of chance and upsets and possibilities. Can Lleyton do it again? Can the Feds hold off the young charge? Can the new kid knock the socks off the number three seed and blow the tournament wide open? Will the compere say something completely inappropriate during his off-the-cuff interview and throw the whole affair into scandal? Will the roof stay open?<br /><br />If you had a spare afternoon in the beer garden, I could buy a jug and bore you into a siesta with the minute details about the most memorable matches of the past decade, or the picky reasons I prefer one commentator over another, or the sixty-seven plus reasons why I will always barrack for Federer. <br /><br />But for the life of me, I could not get out on the court and show you how it's done. As so often occurs in the world of passionate sport enthusiasm, my love for the game belies my complete inability to actually play the dratted sport in any way, shape or form. <br /><br />My lack of skill was not borne from a lack of effort. As a child, I spent countless summer days standing on the tennis court in direct midday sun, smothered in an unfortunate mix of sunscreen and shambling embarrassment, trying my uncoordinated little heart out. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /><br />My repeated attempts to hit the ball
resulted in little more than wild air swings, dull thuds, tangles with
the net, endless double faults and exasperated friends and coaches. My mind had trouble focusing on the ball, wandering off to the choose-your-own-adventure book I was reading or through the latest piece of choreography from jazz ballet class. </span><br /><br />I put it in extra effort. I tried hitting the ball against the wall like the famous Australian tennis star Evonne Goolagong Cawley did as a kid, I tried marathon totem tennis sessions in the backyard, I tried sticking my tongue out at all sorts of various acute angles on the hope a bit of concentration face might help - but it didn't. <br /><br />Eventually, I had to put tennis away in the 'not for me' basket - along with Nippers, basketball, netball, athletics, squash, trampolining, kanga cricket, volleyball, body boarding, BMX riding, mini-golf, roller blading, ice skating, table tennis, frisbee, rope climbing and competitive swimming. <br /><br />It took the majority of my childhood and teenage years to work out I could dance, and I could run long distances reasonably well, but that I couldn't (and shouldn't try) participate in team sports or go anywhere near a ball or bat of any sort, without at least wearing protective headgear and an inflatable suit of armour. <br /><br />While I love teaching my daughter new things, sport is the one aspect of life where I will happily step aside and leave all the lessons to her infinitely more physically coordinated father. <br /><br />I will sit on the sidelines with my fingers and toes firmly crossed that she can throw and catch, hit and bat, putt and bowl, and jump and sprint with even a modicum of the sporting grace and coordination I dreamed about from the chilly icepack embrace of the first aid office. <br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">If sporting prowess was measured in effort, I would be a World Champion with an impressive trophy cabinet and several lucrative sponsorship deals - but as it's not, and I'm not, I will stick with cheering the tennis gods and goddesses on from the physical safety of my couch. <br /><br />Thirty, love. Hit on! </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b><br /><br />Do you follow the tennis? </b></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Do you enjoy watching or playing sport? </b></span></b></span><br /><br />M x </span>Mumdanityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10124926488931146615noreply@blogger.com0Melbourne VIC, Australia-37.814107 144.96327999999994-38.6164245 143.67238649999993 -37.0117895 146.25417349999995tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4043883848469177571.post-57260213311603832622014-01-15T21:20:00.001+11:002014-01-15T21:41:36.643+11:00Meltdown <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /><br />While the top half of the globe recovers from the wrath of the recent polar freeze, Australia is in the grip of a seriously cranky heatwave, and we are rapidly melting back into the earth here in our <a href="http://www.mumdanity.com/2013/10/lemon-aid.html">inner-outer-inner Melbourne suburb</a>. <br /><br />When
I say heatwave, I really mean HEATWAVE. Hot, sweltering, sweating,
stinking, fire breeding, fire breathing, brain draining, soul sapping,
heatwave conditions. <br /><br />And when I say hot, I mean HOT - we've just sweated through two 42 degree days, with tomorrow forecast to reach 44 degrees before dropping back to 42 degrees on Friday. That's Celcius of course - for those of you playing at home on the other side of the world, we're talking Fahrenheit 107.6, 107.6, 111.2, 107.6. <br /><br />The Australian Government <a href="http://www.bom.gov.au/">Bureau of Meteorology's</a> brand new Pilot Heatwave <a href="http://www.bom.gov.au/australia/heatwave/">Forecast</a>, launched just a few hot days ago, has labelled the
current state of play in Melbourne as being an 'extreme heatwave.' The service forecasts that we still have a few more days of 'severe' and normal
heatwave conditions to endure before the climatic oven door gets opened
again this weekend. </span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="273" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnVxOahCUNyzTPUwJ9P1WFjLpc-wqeu2gzeTdSRIeSJZsxKCvBY6-6we965J73Wh103Ip_OelrxrnEptLjazAm3wVG01oi-_d0kwLANbH66SszeyLpcb1oe1rRlB1hrmIgUSUPwT5NjKU/s400/bomheatwave.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Extreme heatwave. Image from <a href="http://www.bom.gov.au/">Bureau of Meteorology. </a></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Our beloved crumbling terrace house normally tides us safely through the many hot peaks and cold troughs of the Melbourne year, </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">but every now and then it gets knocked
for six by an extreme weather curve ball. And this extreme heatwave is
definitely one of those times. <br /><br />The rambling monster </span>has
ripped off its hipster chic facade and is now showing its true blue
stone heart, sucking up the heat like a nursing baby during a growth
spurt and radiating it straight back through the floorboards. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /><br />On
show with it's heart it's its age and mixed bag of unfortunate
structural quirks, and the heat has wasted no time in exploiting the
many gaps in the skirting boards, broken air vents, uncovered man holes,
poorly sealed windows and less-than-well hung front and back doors. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /><br />Despite
the obvious defects in our attack arsenal, and the inevitable futility
of our efforts, we are still putting up a valiant fight against the
elements with the humble weaponry of drawn blinds, pedestal fans, wet
flannels, rolled up towels and cool baths. <br /><br />We have also enlisted
the help of a small portable air-conditioner, which is currently
sucking the guts out of the kitchen at a distressing volume and dripping
water all over the floor (although the sight of any liquid is actually
pretty welcome at this point). <br /><br />The relatively shit little air-con box is struggling with the intensity of
the task, but is admittedly providing a modicum of relief if you stand in the
kitchen. Immediately in front of the air vent. With a wet flannel on
your head. And an ice cube in your mouth. Naked. <br /><br />The heat is
starting to make mince meat of our brains, and make chaos out of our
normal order. Sleep has already gone by the wayside, and our daughter is
slowly but surely winding up like a crazed jack in the box, sans sleep,
sans nap, sans routine, sans comfortable body temperature. <br /><br /><a href="http://www.mumdanity.com/2014/01/the-loudly-quiet-new-year.html">Bucket-head Dog</a> (still stuck in her bucket collar, still feeling sorry for herself)
has given up on the outside world, and has glued herself to the kitchen
floor in an attempt to absorb all the air-conditioned cold benefit
before it spreads to the rest of the family. Skulling water with a cone
on her head is proving to be her most difficult challenge, with a
serious lack of spatial awareness surrounding herself and the cone going
on. <br /><br />Other than rearranging our small cache of cooling methods
and trying them again, though, we are all as short of options as we are
effective air-conditioning and cool temperament. <br /><br />It is too hot
and mad out there for us to go to the <a href="http://www.mumdanity.com/2013/10/the-giant-concrete-puddle.html">pool</a> - think exceptionally fair skin,
babies wriggling out of their rash vests, sweaty bum cracks, school
holiday swim classes, searing concrete, exploding hot dogs, melting
cobbers and four hundred foam noodles and fluorescent kick boards
fighting for water space. <br /><br />The sun is too ferocious to risk a
trip to the beach with a baby under wing - and even if we did succumb to
the powers of heat exhaustion and make it down to the sand, the rolling
heatwave news coverage suggests it would be impossible to find any
space to swim among the miserable, melting, Melbournian hordes. <br /><br />We
cannot take a quick stroll to the park without actual fear of acute
sunburn and heat stroke, and the same goes for pushing the pram to the
local cafe for a refreshing organic smoothie (or tall iced chocolate
with extra whipped cream, if I'm being honest). <br /><br />Despite being
known for their gale force air conditioning, I am reluctant to seek
refuge in shopping centres unless there is an actual emergency alert
issued. The last thing this Mummy can fathom is sharing my very limited
personal space with several thousand hyperactive children and their
exhausted parents, whilst fighting for the last four chicken nuggets and
high chair in the food court. <br /><br />Much the same goes for cinemas,
ice skating rinks, gaming centres, bowling alleys, giant all-you-can-eat
restaurants and sporting complexes - anywhere really, that involves
children or food or high chairs or even just lots of people crammed into
the one room. <br /><br />In a mixed moment of ingenuity and sugar cravings
last night, I sent my husband out to stock up on ice-blocks to make me
at least feel better (and sweeter) over the coming days - but it appears
that the miserable hordes beat us to it and cleaned out the freezer section on their
way home from the beach. </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_nOG_4FB26TC3zi3Jeai5mXb71ZEw3cOfruleMxO5s8GmCPGRblmp07LQf53ql0AezFwG44j5Vu2R6dFR7mzSbZWvOEKMl4sksszPZwd74oJXE7t5blz3zJj2NSYBFWNUwqv6NMYakdA/s1600/noblocks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_nOG_4FB26TC3zi3Jeai5mXb71ZEw3cOfruleMxO5s8GmCPGRblmp07LQf53ql0AezFwG44j5Vu2R6dFR7mzSbZWvOEKMl4sksszPZwd74oJXE7t5blz3zJj2NSYBFWNUwqv6NMYakdA/s400/noblocks.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The hordes beat us to it! </td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Except for a few broken boxes and atrociously unlucky flavours, the ice-block shelves were completely bare - and the ice-cream and sorbet chests were not much better. Even the freeze-yourself-fruit-tube varieties in the dessert aisle were sold out. <br /><br />With a little heatwave luck on his side, he managed to secure the final berry sorbet in the store (and possibly, in the whole of southern Australia) and make it home without getting mugged by overheated shoppers or stopping in the car park to devour the whole tub himself - a frosty new addition to our freezer, and to our rapidly diminishing heatwave arsenal. <br /><br />If only we could buy a truckload of icy cold sorbets and deliver them to the service and emergency crews, though - the electricity workers attending to wires, the ambos treating heat affected souls, the transport workers fixing rails and lines and jams, the firies fighting fires in unbearable heat. The people who will get us through the next few days, and the next heatwave when it arrives. <br /><br />I like my sorbet, and I dislike the heat, but the fact I'm sitting here typing my blog with a shit portable air-conditioner, electricity, internet, and berry sorbet means I'm doing okay. And it's all thanks to them. <br /><br />According to the forecasts, we're halfway there Australia. <br /><br />Keep cool. <b><br /><br />Are you feeling the heatwave? Are you reading on from somewhere cold? How do you keep cool in the heat?</b><br /><br />M x </span>Mumdanityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10124926488931146615noreply@blogger.com6Melbourne VIC, Australia-37.814107 144.96327999999994-38.6164245 143.67238649999993 -37.0117895 146.25417349999995tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4043883848469177571.post-86341233521287217692014-01-10T12:24:00.000+11:002014-01-12T17:06:14.012+11:00The Hardest Decision, The Easiest Day <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Sometimes, the hardest things you can imagine actually turn out to be the easiest - as was the (unexpected) case when my baby started childcare this week. <br /><br />After winning the <a href="http://www.mumdanity.com/2013/10/the-child-care-lottery.html">childcare place lottery</a> in October, I spent two and a half long months dreading the inevitable moment of separation, and second-guessing my hard fought decision. <br /><br />On the days I was scrambling to keep the contents of the house off the floor while simultaneously pureeing pork and mash and paying the car rego at the Post Office, I could see the wisdom of my decision shining through the cloudy oven door.</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /><br />On the days when I was writing articles
to deadline and submitting job applications amid chaos, I would flop
open my mind and mentally skip down the childcare driveway with bottles
of expressed milk and bouquets of roses in hand. </span> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />On the days when I watched my daughter playing with other babies at Parents Group catch ups and annual family gatherings, pushing toys back and forward and freaking out when they touched her hair, I would relax into my decision and start prattling about the many virtues and benefits of social interaction from a young age. <br /><br />On the days when my daughter would light up the room, or unexpectedly manage to stand on her onesie clad foot, or suddenly find a decisive 'bird' or 'ball' from within the constant stream of babble, I would emotionally bail on the whole childcare caper. <br /><br />I would resolve to become unresolved, and start preparing my fiery argument against childcare, for consideration and endless discussion in the marital decision court over turkey burgers and salad come dinner time. <br /><br />As we descended into the final fortnight of unadulterated stay-at-home-mummydom, my clingy mother status skyrocketed from lousy home brand cling wrap to the top shelf, brand name stuff. <br /><br />I spent countless hours holding onto my baby for dear life, even when she clearly wanted to be out of my arms and exploring the ceaselessly amazing fluff content of the lounge room carpet. <br /><br />My hug and kiss rations multiplied, and where I would normally give one kiss, I started to dole out ten, with an extra butterfly kiss and a special peck on the cheek for added good measure. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />I unintentionally dug deeper all round, ensuring that every block tower was knocked down with unusual oomph, every outfit change was selected with unexpected fastidiousness, every Incy Wincy rendition delivered with extra special hand movements and embarrassing facial expressions. <br /><br />Unfortunately, cling wrap is not thick enough to keep out the world, and my excessive hug-a-thon eventually dribbled away into the inevitable orientation day that had been marked on the kitchen calendar for so long. <br /><br />Orientation was far cooler than I had been prepared to give it credit for. It was a bit like my own personal halfway house, all the freedom and responsibility of entering the real childcare world with the safety net of being able to run back up the corridor and into the nursery room whenever my panic got the better of me. <br /><br />As I tiptoed out of the room for my trial separation, heart somewhere between my esophagus and my churning stomach, my daughter pounced on a pile of triangular shape sorting blocks and stuck a plastic stegosaurus in her mouth - <i>go away, mum, you're cramping my prehistoric dining adventure</i>. <br /><br />With my heart still somehow inside my body and the trial separation inked in the childcare day book as a theoretical success, we progressed with lightning speed to the real deal - the first day of childcare, no safety net attached. <br /><br />My husband and I decided to climb the mountain together - or rather, I dragged him up the mountain against his will to help push me along when I tried to turn around and roll back down to the safety of another day at home with a morning nap and afternoon pram walk. <br /><br />After so much anticipation and dread, though, the mountain seemed radically smaller in real life. Despite months of technicolour nightmares, I did not self combust or hyperventilate or have to dodge cesspits of fire and brimstone. <br /><br />Perhaps it was the afterglow of the orientation trial separation, or the promise of uninterrupted french toast and coffee for breakfast, or the wonderful teachers in the centre, but I felt strangely calm as I dropped my daughter off and effectively tipped our lives upside down forever. <br /><br />I kissed my daughter goodbye and simply stepped out the front door and into the new world order, leaving her to crawl off into a wooden mirror maze with a look of baby awe plastered all over her face. <br /><br />My daughter didn't notice I was gone, I didn't cry like a baby or wail like a banshee, my toast and coffee did not get tipped on the floor or covered in steamed apple and pear once - and I even managed to vacuum the skirting boards properly for the first time in nine months. <br /><br />Six hours later, my daughter greeted me at the nursery door with a shoe full of sand and a face full of sheer excitement - and in that moment the hardest decision I ever made suddenly became the easiest. <br /><b><br />Have you had to make tough family decisions? Have you left your child in care? I would love to hear your stories.</b><br /><br />M x <br /><br />Sharing for #FYBF at <a href="http://www.withsomegrace.com/">www.withsomegrace.com</a> </span>Mumdanityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10124926488931146615noreply@blogger.com8Melbourne VIC, Australia-37.814107 144.96327999999994-38.6164245 143.67238649999993 -37.0117895 146.25417349999995tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4043883848469177571.post-65394814541851478072014-01-07T23:52:00.000+11:002014-01-08T09:46:08.277+11:00The Loudly Quiet New Year <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />New Years Eve is a quiet affair when you have a baby. <br /><br />At least, that's what folklore and commonsense led me to believe. <br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">After spending the Christmas break road tripping nearly 3000 kilometres across three states in just nine days, my husband and I didn't have enough festive frivolity left for a big night of New Years Eve social shenanigans. <br /><br />Aware of our relatively recent transition from vibrant-twenty-something-land to quiet-suburban-parent-ville, we tried to muster some mild enthusiasm for the upcoming annual event, but there was nothing: zip, zilch, nada, not even a single sparkler of enthusiasm. <br /><br />We were broken - from the highway, the overflowing roadside toilets, the prepackaged sandwiches, the crowded petrol stations, the brewing MasterCard statement, and the latest epic <a href="http://www.mumdanity.com/2013/11/a-parent-in-six-letters.html">pooplosion</a> installment in the unfortunate ongoing series. <br /><br />The baby was broken from nine days of ridiculously stimulating Christmas wrapping paper and exotic portable cot locations, and even the dog was broken after an unexpected spot of painful festive season ear surgery and a bucket-head collar to stop her scratching the wounds. <br /><br />As the final afternoon of the year gave way to evening, there was nothing left on our silly season list but to fetch our trackies and set up camp in the lounge room with our old friends Vodka and Christmas Chocolate, while Bucket-head lamented in the kitchen. <br /><br />Several vodkas in, with some mindless comedy on the telly and the baby well and truly ensconced in her nightly REM party for one, it became apparent that perhaps we had JUST enough energy to bring in the New Year with, <i>ahem</i>, a bit of romantic bang. <br /><br />A few more vodkas, a few more minutes on the clock, a few less pairs of tracksuit pants on legs, and we were getting ready to bring in the New Year ... </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">when Melbourne unexpectedly lifted and exploded under us like one giant communal cracker. <br /><br />All hell broke loose. The sky above our house switched on with the impressive illuminating powers of the official Melbourne fireworks displays, while our <a href="http://www.mumdanity.com/2013/10/lemon-aid.html">inner-outer-inner suburb</a> nearly lifted off the ground with the force of several thousand consecutively sparked illegal fireworks. <br /><br />The kids down the road (whose parents had presumably consumed far more vodka than ourselves and were missing in action), set up an alarmingly impressive arsenal of fireworks in the middle of the road and tried to literally bring the neighbourhood into the new year in a blaze of illegal glory. <br /><br />An entire city of police car sirens went off in almost-perfect unison, whizzing around the cracker-filled streets like a super-sized nest of really angry bees, with far too many targets for far too few stings. <br /><br />Call and response style, all the cars on the main drag started honking their horns in an obnoxious salute to the new year, setting off a Mexican wave of discordant honks and beeps across the suburb: an orchestra being strangled in tediously slow motion. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />Bucket-head went ballistic, breaking through the doggy-kid-drunk adult safety gate and bolting across the lounge room for the apparent safety of the front hallway, nearly decapitating herself with her own bucket several times on the way through and taking a pair of discarded trackies and a cushion with her. </span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /><br />The baby, having slept through the
start of the end of the earth, woke to the dog tearing down the hallway
and proceeded to sing and squeal her way into the New Year, her
less-than-dulcet baby tones amplified through the baby monitor for good
measure. <br /><br />Seven minutes and a whole lot of noise into the new year, we relinquished the final dregs of our unexpected romantic mood and called it a night, determined to find our trackies and the inside of our eyelids as quickly as possible. <br /><br />Shoving the last chocolate in my mouth and searching for my trackies in the hallway, I pondered how I could possibly have forgotten about the New Years Eve fireworks: after all, the two go hand in hand, much </span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">like ravers with glow sticks, tea with bikkies, and parents with sleep deprivation and tracksuit pant romance. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Ahh well. At least we got a New Years bang of sorts. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /><br /><b>Did your New Years Eve live up to expectations? </b><br /><br />M x </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>Mumdanityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10124926488931146615noreply@blogger.com1Melbourne VIC, Australia-37.814107 144.96327999999994-38.6164245 143.67238649999993 -37.0117895 146.25417349999995