LEARNING FROM A BABY - IF THEY CAN DO IT, WHY CAN'T I?

There are lots of things Q can do that I can’t.

·               Go from a sitting position, to an open-hipped squat, to standing, in one fluid motion without grunting, dislocating her hips or having to rock back and forth to get enough momentum to execute the move in the first place.

·               Cover herself in plum so that she looks like she’s been punched in the face and carry on as if nothing is awry.

·               Whinge incessantly if things aren’t going her way. G may argue that she inherited this trait from her mother, but I don't think so. I prefer to yell.

·               Find my nipples in a nuclear blackout. This trait she most definitely inherited from her father.

·               Freakishly manage to double the mass of food she inhaled by the time it comes out the other end. Particularly corn.

·               Say countless words including bath, baby, bye-bye, apple, banana, several animal noises and Dada, but still not Mamma to any degree of understanding.

·               Limitless determination to try, try and try again until she can do it.

 It is this surety of her own invincibility that I am trying to emulate as we go forward with this opening your own restaurant gig.

When do humans learn – or concede - that they might not be able to do everything?

When do we stop trying new things?

What makes us doubt our own abilities?

Q doesn’t. If there’s something she wants, someone she needs, she works, works, works until that thing or person is hers.

To be fair, some of her success is due to the capitulation of her parents, but for the most part she works towards her goal until she’s got it in her firm baby grasp.

It’s admirable.

And daunting.

And time for her mother to stop pussyfooting around and set her a good example.

Excuse me please, I have a business to run.

BOOB FAIRIES, BREASTFEEDING AND BETTER OUT THAT IN!

Totally lame and pathetic, but today has been busier than planned.
She says, like that's different to any other day.
So in a complete cop-out, I'm reposting the blog I wrote this time last year.
Last year, when I was carrying my little peanut safe inside, enduring the 6 weeks of pre-labour and starting to wonder just why I thought I was up for this gig in the first place...
Enjoy and apologies,

Happy Monday!

BIKINI WAX, BABIES AND ELEVATOR MUSIC

As a mum, there are some things I choose to do with Q in my arms.

·               Hang out washing for example – before she was crawling, but was Captain Cling and couldn’t be out of my arms for a second.

·               Make dinner – I am very good friends with slow cooker, all you really have to be able to do is open cans and chop stuff up. So yeah, things might not all be the same size, but the only person that upsets is my husband the chef, which thereby results in him offering to cook tea. Brilliant.

·               Fold laundry – Q over my shoulder practicing her standing by digging her feet into my abdomen.

·               Write a blog – I am a demon one-handed typer.

·               Answer the phone – don’t actually manage to have an intelligent or lengthy conversation with anyone this way, but at least acquire the essential information.

Then there are some things I do with Q at my feet, hanging onto my leg.

·               Clean teeth – she loves the sound of the electric toothbrush – weird because she’s scared of the hand blender and they’re nearly the same sound.

·               Shower. When you’re staying in a motel with no bath in a country town without your husband and she’s covered in the mandarin she destroyed at dinner and therefore so are you.

·               Pluck my eyebrows. That would be very dangerous if she were in my arms. I’d look like a chicken on its way to the oven.

·               Washing up. I can often distract her with a wide selection of Tupperware and a couple of nicely pitched pots and pans.

Then there are other things I choose not to do with Q at all.

·               Ride a bike. Some people possess the required skills. I, unfortunately, do not.

·               Go to an audition. While she’s cute and all, she’s also a horrible distraction, not the least because looking at her may dilute my want to get the gig and leave her at all anyway.

·               Talk to my superannuation fund. I don’t understand them at the best of times.

·               Stretching post run. Very difficult to stretch your quad with Q hanging onto it while you try. As a result I am tied more tightly than an actor’s purse strings.

·               Wax my bikini. Seriously, not an activity I need her along for. Not so my neighbour who bravely decided to take her daughter up to the local salon. Armed with a bumbo seat, she places her child inside and lets the beautician get to work. Very quickly her daughter realises something is awry. Why is mum squealing? Why is that lady making that horrible ripping sound? What is that hot, dripping substance in the big bowl over there? Why is my mother’s leg braced against the wall, her other one at an angle that makes it look broken? What is that weird, annoying, waterfall elevator music and how do I make it stop? So there my neighbour is, teeth gritted, legs spread, hoo-ha exposed and her daughter, serenading the experience with her ear piercing shrieks. One could argue it would detract from the pain of having hair ripped from your nether regions. Maybe my neighbour is onto something after all… 

CELEBRATING DYSLEXIA, AUTISM, HAEMORRHAGING AND EPISIOTOMIES.

In honour of Q’s 9-month anniversary, I’ve decided to keep the celebrations going and celebrate some of the crazy, odd, rude, weird and funny things people have said to me during the growing, delivery and earth-dwelling moments of the divine Miss Q.

In no particular order…

‘Are you a natural redhead?’ a shoe saleswoman says to me when I’m 39 weeks pregnant and decided I really needed to buy a new pair of shoes.

‘Yeah, I’m way too lazy to dye it,’ I reply, I get this question reasonably often.

‘You’d better watch out then. Redheads don’t clot well. Be careful you don’t haemorrhage to death.’

I sure don’t get that answer all the time.

‘If you want to do everything you can to avoid a miscarriage,’ says the doctor I saw for the first and last time after this comment, ‘avoid spicy food and running.’

I had already run 60k’s that week.

By the way, there is absolutely no scientific evidence to support the theory that exercise can induce a miscarriage.

So there.

‘You’re definitely carrying a boy.’

WRONG WRONG WRONG world. 

The only person who was right was the old bloke who works at the funeral parlour on the corner.

‘Oh no, you won’t feel an episiotomy,’ says the midwife who took us through our antenatal classes, ‘they do it at the height of a contraction.’

Excellent.

Contractions hurt more than having my clacker snipped without anaesthetic.

Is there any way out of this?

‘It looks like you got at yourself with a whipper snipper,’ my husband proclaims when he sees the home-job bikini wax I performed on myself mid pregnancy, when I couldn’t see the offending area.

‘Miso soup is excellent for labouring women.’

No idea why. I think the midwife that told us that just likes it.

‘Try some nipple tweaking and rigorous sex,’ my godmother alarmingly informs me during my final weeks, which were full of brutal pre-labour, ‘that ought to bring this baby on.’

It didn’t.

Nor did running ten k’s.

My girl came when she was good and ready, but when she came, boy did she come. See point below.

‘Is this normal?’ Gregory mouths to the midwife halfway through our very fast labour.

‘No,’ she mouths back, ‘but she’s doing an excellent job.’

‘Eat an egg a day and the baby will slip right out of you.’

Boy am I glad I didn’t do this. She would have flown out.

‘Oh, your daughter likes to get around naked,’ a mother comments to me when Q was rudee-nudee in the middle of last year’s sweltering summer. ‘Careful, not liking clothing is one of the first signs of autism.’

‘Wack a cabbage leaf inside your maternity bra to prevent mastitis.’

Enough said.

‘Hmmmmm,’ a concerned child worker said to me a while ago, ‘you really want to encourage Q to crawl before she walks. If she doesn’t she may be dyslexic.’

And my most recent favourite…

‘Isn’t it nice you had a daughter,’ an old lady says to me at the swimming pool last week. ‘You’ll have your daughter for the rest of your life. But not your sons. Daughters-in-law are like the war, they take your sons away.’

Happy 9 months Q.

Without you, I never would have known any of this.

And then where would I be?

CLOSE, BUT NO IPAD...

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I was a finalist in the Kleenex Mums So You Think You Can Blog competition.

Turns out I was one of their top ten.

Close.

But no ipad...

CHLORINE IS CRACK

I have cracked the Q code people.

After hanging out together twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for nearly 9 months, I’ve finally worked out how to tire my girl out.

Here’s how:

·               Yesterday we woke up and had our usual faff around from 5.43am to 7am.

·               7am feed

·               dress and pack bags for excursion

·               put Q in her chariot, seat upright so she can see the world and wave and talk to everyone she meets

·               40 minute walk in the sunshine and fresh air to meet a friend for breakfast

·               breakfast and play in the park for a couple of hours, eating dirt and trying to crawl

·               40 minute walk home again in the fresh air and sunshine (still kicking, singing and waving)

·               lunch, run some errands and practice her plank position on the floor

·               30 minute walk (short nap and more kicking, waving and singing) to the swimming pool

·               40 minutes in the pool doing full immersion, kicking and some Olympic hopeful splashing

·               30 minute return walk – still kicking, waving and singing

·               third independently eaten meal for the day, spectacular mess throughout the kitchen

·               long bath to soak off the chlorine and much to be said to her bath friends the fish and the rubber duck

·               story time (which she has no interest in, beyond wanting to eat the book)

·               cuddles and bed without a fuss at 8pm

·               dream feed at 11

·               weird 1am scream (as usual. No idea why she does this, will worry about it another day)

·               6.45am wake up

·               6.45am wake up. I’ve just written that again to make sure you understood what I wrote.

That’s right folks, the mama slept from 1am to 6.45am.

Trouble is, I really needed it.

The only problem with successfully tiring out the unstoppable Miss Q, is I’m bloody exhausted myself!

Still, that’s a victory. And after the number of failures I’ve had this week, I’ll take the victories as they come.

May you too crack the code.

Have a great Friday.

Don’t forget to wear your jeans.

MARY POPPINS, TUMBLE TURNS AND NEAR-PERFECT DAYS

Today was one of those rare, magnificent days.

Miss Q and I awoke, not too early, not too late and had a morning visit from one of her Uncles, which saw her smiling and singing by 7.30am.

The three of us mooched up to her father’s cafe to join a friend for breakfast where Q threw egg, rockmelon and vegemite toast about the place while listening to her pterodactyl noise echo off the walls.

Food and singing. What more could a girl need.

Q and I ambled home a bit later and she explored the grass while I hung out the washing.

Then, like a perfect child, took a nap for AN HOUR AND A HALF!!!

Not that I was there to enjoy such free time, as I was busy being cut by the important people behind the casting desk at the replacement call for Mary Poppins.

As if auditions aren’t hard enough without having to also be the same height, size, voice type and abilities as whomever it is they’re trying to replace.

So I’ve decided the person leaving is a short, big boobed, tightrope-walking soprano and that’s why they cut me.

It couldn’t possibly be because I wasn’t good enough.

How absurd.

Miss Q napping meant I couldn’t do a warm up, so I walked into the audition and serenaded the traffic as I crossed the Anzac Bridge.

Sun shining, water glistening, air warm and not-too-polluted and there I was singing my songs at the top of my lungs.

Knowing that my baby girl was sleeping at home makes that scenario nigh on perfect.

After the not-so-perfect audition I returned home to hear the divine Miss Q chatting away to our family-friend-landlord-Q-sitter, telling him everything that was on her mind.

Turns out they’d had a delightful couple of hours. They’d returned to Gregory’s café for lunch where this time she’d decorated the floor and walls with avocado on toast, plain yoghurt and a few stray bits of apple.

They’d played on the floor – well, Q writhed about, tried to crawl and generally made a grab for everything dangerous or inappropriate.

They’d gone for a walk, Miss Q pushed along in her chariot, waving at everyone she passes as she still assumes the whole world revolves around her.

And – of course - they’d done lots of talking. 

Q always has a fair bit to say.

After I inhaled some lunch and our family-friend-landlord-Q-sitter returned downstairs, Q and I headed over to the local pool for a swim.

A delightful walk along the bay run to get there, Miss Q napping peacefully under her hat while we did, and a good forty-five minutes practicing our tumble turns in the baby pool.

We are so ready for next year’s Olympics.

A lovely sun drenched walk home, Miss Q threw her dinner about while I prepared ours, a bath where she told her fish and duck friends about her swim, a lengthy feed and bed.

Yeah sure, I got another rejection (if you combine my literary and musical ones I think that makes the fifth for the past week alone).

But it was a magnificent day, my girl is just about the coolest thing I could ever imagine and every moment we share together fills my heart with more joy and happiness than any opening night or publishing deal ever could.

It’d still be nice to test the theory though...

TIZZIE HALL WOULD NOT BE MY FRIEND

My dear friend, the mother of Master W gave me Tizzie Hall’s Save Our Sleep the other day.

So far it is doing an excellent job of collecting dust on my bedside table.

Not because I can’t read but because I don’t want to read it.

I have a sneaking suspicion the first chapter is going to go something like this:

‘Naomi. Come on. The problem here is not Q, it’s you. 

Take a look at yourself. You know what you’re doing don’t you? 

You’re still giving her that 3am feed. 

The 3am feed that happens anywhere between 1.43am and 3.27am largely because you haven’t tried to stop it. 

She’s over six months now, she doesn’t need it. Time to cut it out. 

And don’t even get me started on the subject of co-sleeping.’

But I think it’s misnamed. I don’t call it co-sleeping.

I call it ‘I can’t be arsed staying up and putting her back in bed, it’s easier just to toss her a nipple and get back to the business of sleeping’ sleeping, and honestly I can’t imagine why more people aren’t doing it.

Am I the only one who’s taking the path of least resistance?

Don’t answer that question.

As another dear friend pointed out, she thinks the problem lies with us not with our girls.

It’s just that every time I plan to give the axing of the 3am feed a go, something monstrous gets in the way.

·               Gregory with his man cold

·               Gregory with his slipped disc

·               Gregory working 6 days a week – lets face it, it’s going to have to be Gregory who gets up to her. She’ll smell equal parts milk and weakness on me in two seconds flat.

·               Auditions. I need the most sleep I can get to be able to concentrate on dance routines these days, so if this means letting us both dose while Miss Q has my nipple in her mouth, so be it.

·               Weekends away. You can hardly ask a kid to change their routine, then change the new routine on them mid-change.

·               Laziness. Lets be honest. This is the major reason for sure.

The worst part about this is that my friend gave me this book. 

Which means she doesn’t need it anymore. 

Because she’s given up the 3am feed.

And I haven’t.

Ho hum.

Like most things in life…

I’ve only got myself to blame.

FAILSAFE TIPS FOR NEW PARENTS

 What I've learned so far. May my misfortune be to your benefit...

·               Even if they writhe on floor like a fish out of water, semi-mobile babies can actually move further than you think.  Mind the plants.

·                Dressing them is like trying to put a cat in a hessian sack. There is no solution to this but to have all the clothes already prepared and to sing louder than they yell.

·               Tupperware is an absolute hit. Big favourites are those things that juice lemons, though I’ve no idea why we own one, I don’t think I’ve ever used one in real life.

·               Babies who reject the bottle will also likely reject cups with sippy-things on them. Just go straight to the cup. Which means water will end up all over them, you and the floor but at least they’re not yelling at you.

·               Vests are great for winter as they’re easy to put on a baby whose arms move so frantically you think you’re dressing an octopus.

·               They’re narcissistic little buggers. Give ‘em a mirror and they’ll gaze at themselves for ages.

·               Hair pulling is apparently a really fun activity. Try and remember to tie back long hair before breastfeeding.

·               Watch out for flailing limbs during a midnight tantrum. A double-footed boxing kangaroo kick to the sternum will really hurt in the morning.

·               There is an unfortunate angle when you’re holding babies on their side that is almost guaranteed to cause a leaker of the nappy if they wee. Again, nothing to be done but a total outfit change for all involved.

·               Everything passes. They can’t not sleep forever. They can’t cry for twenty-four hours straight. It just feels like they can. But if all else fails…

·               Remember that if you have a glass of wine while you’re breastfeeding there’s no way the alcohol can get to them. You are safe. Drink away.