inner pickle

Looking good, Vern. (Or not).

So I MAY have forgotten that the community nurse was coming to our house this morning to check out Ivy.

Now I know she's not 'community services' and she's not actually technically judging me in terms of my competence, but I really didn't do myself any favours. 

Bit of a disturbed night, not too bad, but up a few times and a bit bleary this morning. One of my godsons, Sebastian, arrived early for a play while his mum went into work for a few hours. I was in the shower. Adam's still home, thankfully! Another week!

An hour later, Ad suggests he walks up to our local cafe to get some coffee for us, and thinks he'll take Ivy (cafe owner Judy is already smitten with our little lady.)

So at some point I hear the kids open the front door and an adult voice say: Is your mother home?

I look at my two, it's a cold day in Sydney and they seem to only be wearing their pyjama bottoms. Sebastian at least is dressed. But is carrying a gun. (A gift from my brother for Henry. A Nerf Gun. I keep finding Adam playing with it.) 

The house is a mess and I don't mean that generously. It's a mess. I'm dressed, albeit with excellent bed head and committed ugg boots on. I am so all over this parenting thing. 

Of course the nurse wants to see Ivy. Oops. Call Ad, thank goodness he took his mobile. He retrieves Ivy from Judy and flies back down the hill.

I guess this nurse goes into lots of muddled houses. She did comment that our children seemed very happy (they were marching through the house with drums and maracas at this point.) She surprised me by commenting as she left what a confident mother I was. 

Confident my two half-naked smallies weren't going to catch pneumonia? Confident an additional kid (Sebastian, I mean) actually makes things easier, not harder, 'cause he plays so well with the other two? Confident that coffee happily cures all bleariness?

Oh yes. So confident. 

P.S. Don't know about the kids, but I am happy. Grateful for my family and friends and most of all my gorgeous wee girl, well, healthy, settled.  Very grateful. 

xxx

stuff I learnt this week

: Turns out some newborns do just eat and sleep. I thought that was something people just claimed. We're not naive enough to know this may not all change tomorrow, but we're super grateful for Ivy being so chilled out right now. (And not feeding two-hourly through the night like her sister used to!)

: Having a newborn makes your older kids look ridiculously big and grown up.

(Henry and I having some downtime in a cafe this week over hot chocolate and gingerbread men. Gamer-boy preoccupied while I was breastfeeding.)

: Friends are awesome. This week ours took our older kids away and sent Ad and I out for lunch, they brought cake, they brought/sent/made amazingly thoughtful gifts and came around with champagne and lots of laughing. 

: Sydney Aquarium rocks.  

: It's a bit of a shame to go to the aquarium with a flat camera battery. (The iPhone doesn't really cut it.)

: Sydney Aquarium has a pretty proficient lost child procedure.

: Note to self: dress Matilda Daisy in bright colours, preferably fluorescent, when taking her to fascinating places with hundreds of other people amongst whom you can easily lose sight of a waist-high person in search of the turtles; thereby saving us ten minutes of rising panic wherein we each shed ten years off our lives. 

: My brother, visiting from the US this week, is superbly talented (no bias here. Absolutely objective.) New demo CD. He rocks. 

: My friend Vanessa, mum of one of Henry's besties at school, is super clever. Check out these cupcakes she made and brought over yesterday!

  

 
Amazing, right?

: Adam can cook. I don't mean to sound surprised, but I don't mean whip-up-scrambled-eggs-and-bacon cook. He's been cooking all week, and we had friends round for dinner last night and he made fabulous gourmet burgers (yep, a bit of meat is back on the menu here - more on that in another post) with haloumi and chutney, served with crispy and fluffy twice-cooked potato chips and a divine, light passionfruit flummery for dessert. Damn I hope this doesn't mess up our I cook/he cleans arrangement. I am seriously crap at cleaning. 

: It's illegal to bury someone without a coffin. My friend Ben (who appears in post comments here as Benoss) and Adam were cheerfully discussing funeral options, as you do, and Adam was saying he wants to be buried in a completely compostable (preferably cardboard) coffin, preferably with worms included. (Could you be any more green, baby?) Anyway, Ben suggested doing away with the coffin and so we sent another friend (the other Vanessa) who loves this stuff, off to call up a few funeral homes and find out the deal. Deal is: gotta use a coffin. No shroud only option. But she's making more calls so will update you as news comes in. 

: The weirder the better. And if you can come up with REALLY weird, send it over to Kate at Picklebums, OK?! (Everyone's going way too easy on her so far.)

xxx

fine for YOU to laugh

Henry: (To me, while in the car, Adam driving.) How did the baby get in your tummy?

Me: *cough* Really? We're having that conversation?

Henry: (steely-eyed) But how?

Me: Daddy put it there. 

Henry: Daddy, how did you do that?

Adam: (straight-faced) Mummies and daddies have special cuddles and that's how babies get into mummies tummies. (Yes he used the expression special cuddles. My take away coffee was coming out my nose about now.)

Henry: Do you cut a hole in the tummy to get the baby in?

Adam: A very reasonable question Henry, but no, daddies make baby seed and put it in mummies.

Henry: Baby seed?

Adam: Baby seed. 

Henry: Can I make baby seed? I want to make baby seed.

Adam: (Still straight faced. I've given up on the coffee as I'm currently seriously choking.) You can make baby seed when you're a grown up. 

Henry: Can I make baby seed with you, Daddy?

Adam: No, that's not how it works. Hey Henry, look at that interesting car over there! Isn't it interesting!

Henry: I want to make baby seed.

Adam: I have to pull over. Your mother has inhaled her coffee. That's enough about baby seed. 

Henry: Can we have one more baby? We need a boy baby. There are three girls and two boys in this family. We need a boy baby. 

Adam: No more babies, Henry. Get used to being outnumbered, dude. Honey, put the cup down. Deep breaths. OK? Let's go.

xxx

 

Mother guilt

Here's one for you: Why are mother's so good at guilt?

Does it fall to us naturally to feel like we're never quite cutting it or is it a twenty-first century working-mother specialty? I wonder.

I am so bloody excellent at it. Guilty of letting my children watch TV. Guilty of raising my voice. Guilty of occasionally serving popcorn for dinner. Guilty of not homeschooling. Guilty of bribing with chocolate frogs.

And now preschoolers are being diagnosed with depression? Heck.

I'm sensing an anxiety connection. 

There are sad coroner records from the Middle Ages detailing the deaths of infants who had been left swaddled in a crib near a fire while Mum went out to work or who were disastrously left in the care of a three year old sibling. There's some serious historical mother guilt. The mothers weren't usually charged but neither does the coroner record her grief.

There are a hundred self help books about mothering without guilt and I'm guilty of walking right on past and buying a Stephen Fry novel instead. 

So here's one for you who are truly giving it a red hot go. The ones who frequently think: I should be doing this differently but who follow instinct anyway. For you who ponder: if one more person tells me stop-and-enjoy-this-time-it-goes-so-fast I am going to tear their head off. I give you this:

You're reading a blog. Which means you search out stuff. Which means you're curious which naturally means you're intelligent which means your kids are REALLY LUCKY because even if they do occasionally get popcorn for dinner or perhaps have the odd afternoon of TV they've got a Mum with smarts and this means everything will be OK. And YOU. You have a plan. You always have a plan. You don't have time for guilt. You're too busy getting through this totally lovely year and trying to remember how it felt to feel totally lovely. HOLD ON, OK?

Because even if you eat five pieces of yesterday's caramel, your bum will never look like this.

xxx