Q GOT INTO CHILD CARE!!!!!

Q got into day care.

If you’re not a Sydney parent, you’ll be wondering why this statement is significant.

Seriously people, it’s far more than just significant.

This is like saying you beat Ian Thorpe. Or got upgraded to first class on a long haul flight with Qantas. Or had a helpful customer service operator.

It represents one of the major parenting victories. A success story to be shared around the dinner table, passed along over the back fence when you’re watering the garden, to be retold for generations to come.

How the Mighty Q found herself in day care with one email and a deleted application form.

Let me start at the beginning…

It became evident some months ago (like the day she turned up) that Q was the kind of kid who would benefit from a variety of inputs owing to her inexhaustible nature and quest for adventure.

More recently I finally acknowledged that despite my best efforts of parks, walks, swims, books, adventures, people and excursions, I was still not giving her quite what she needed or desired. (Hence the full throttle, full body, full volume tantrums).

Most recently, I was forced to concede that opening a restaurant, moving house, Q’s developing language and social interaction and opening a restaurant may in fact mean I need to find some assistance in the raising of the divine, unstoppable Miss Q.

I cannot be everything to my girl. I have always believed it takes a village to raise a child.

It’s time to call on the villagers.

And so, on the recommendation of a friend, I shot off an email to a day care, got an acceptance response, met with the owner for well over an hour, where not once did she make us feel possessive, neurotic, ridiculous or obsessive, and Q is due to start just after easter.

I know, I know, I’ve just found the holy grail for inner city parents – child care the days I wanted at a place I like, who doesn’t care if I only put Q in for a few hours until I’m brave enough to leave her for longer.

Complete, utter, inner-city victory.

The funny thing is, I’m not that kind of girl. I never win raffles, I’m never in the right place at the right time, I’m the tortoise. Slow and steady, and even then I usually don’t win the race.

This is something weird. Some odd cosmic collision of need and opportunity.

Thank you world, and thank you villagers.

My little girl is on her way… 

HOMESCHOOLING, BAD PARENTING & WHY AIRPLANES ARE THE PERFECT LOCATION FOR SQUEEZING ZITS!

I don’t mind flying.  It’s like shopping – a necessary evil.  The best part of both being the overhead fluorescent lights found in airplane toilets and dressing room cubicles - perfect lighting for blackhead squeezing. 

I have passed many a shopping hour digging out those hard-to-see-under-ordinary-household-lighting-chin-heads.  I may not have a dress to wear to the wedding I was meant to be shopping for, but at least I know I’ll be going with clear skin. 

It’s a fabulous by-product of an otherwise expensive and rather boring activity, though you do cop a few stares from irritated passengers when you finally come out of the airplane toilet. 

Obviously, due to your time behind the locked door, they think you’ve been getting rid of some seriously hazardous material and they know they’ve got no choice but to head on in there and suffer the scent. 

But I don’t think anyone actually poos on an airplane on account of the bread rolls they serve.  It is like eating a block of mildly flavoured sandstone, guaranteed to wedge in your colon and halt the passing of any solid waste. 

I think it’s a deliberate ploy on the part of the airlines. 

I don’t care which celebrity chef does your airline’s food, every meal contains the sandstone roll to prevent in-flight toilet blockages, overly long queues and potential diarrhea. 

I have contemplated telling my fellow passengers what I’ve really been up to in there, but somehow I’m not sure they would consider my mini-facial worth the fifteen minutes I made them wait.

This time round however, I arrived in LA with the same clogged skin I had at take-off on account of my child only sleeping 3 out of 14 hours, and spending the other 11 hooning up and down the aisles, finding the long legs of only good-looking, single men to help her stand up when she wanted to.

She took a particular liking to a gent in 47A.

Seriously, it looked like a stitch-up. Like I’d deliberately sent her his way.

Luckily she didn’t stay put long enough for me to have to engage in embarrassing small talk. Although I must say, my girl has excellent taste.

What’s that phrase? An old bird like me can look at the menu, I just can’t order.

And so we landed in LA, my skin none the better for it, and the first leg of our journey to the Big Apple over.

It had been our thinking to give Q a chance to stretch her legs by breaking the trip in LA, but since she stretched them the whole way there, she was then ready for a little shut eye, and literally fell face forward into my lap on the cab ride to the hotel, where we were shortly meeting friends, thereby making it impossible for me to nap and leading to a 36 hour stretch of wakedness which seriously blew.

Wakedness is not a word as far as I can tell. Which should indicate to you just how tired I really was. Am.

There is a reason the Army uses sleep deprivation as a means of torture and punishment.

Two days later we boarded an American Airlines flight bound for my favourite town, NYC.

Typically, I am not a fan of AA, but I was a fan this time because I had used my points through Qantas to gain free flights and free makes me a fan of anything.

But it wasn’t just that. Someone in the marketing team, or perhaps is was customer relations, maybe HR, I don’t know, but someone had alerted the flight attendants to the notion that it is in fact their job to serve people, that a pleasant attitude is pretty much mandatory and that ironing your uniform has the dual purpose of making it look like you care a bit even if you don’t, and reassuring a nervous flyer that there is some sort of attention to detail within a company responsible for flying you through the air from one location to another.

Well done American Airlines. I will stop besmirching your name.

In an effort to tire Q out, we let her crawl madly about LAX (the most boring airport in the universe, which meant Q was interesting to all and forced me into more banal conversations about my daughter, parenting and whether or not we’ll try to manipulate the sex of our second child) until boarding time.

The flight wasn’t full, but bulkhead seats are the popular ones, so we had another family across the aisle with a daughter who looked to be about four, and a woman next to us who we immediately apologised to on Q’s behalf.

‘Oh don’t worry,’ she says, ‘I’ve flown with my sister’s two children, I understand. Do you breastfeed? My sister did. Does. Her children are four. She’s still breastfeeding. Oh no, I think it’s weird too, don’t worry. She’s into attachment parenting do you know what that is?’

Gregory was still looking horrified at the four comment, so I shook my head on our behalf.

‘It’s when you never say no to your children, you just give them other suggestions instead.’

‘Excuse me please Quinn, before you go crawling off that veranda there, might I suggest you read a book instead.’

Yeah right.

After we’d overcome our shock, we got ourselves comfortable and it occurred to me as I watched the woman with the daughter wipe down every surface with a sterile wipe, that Q was currently munching on snacks from hands I’d forgotten to wipe clean after crawling on the airport floor.

The fact that I forgot to wipe her hands makes me a bad parent.

The fact that she was eating organic kale puffs with dirty hands makes me a good parent.

They cancel each other out.

‘You have a little baby girl,’ says the woman’s daughter, immediately identifying herself as a genius for not thinking Q was a boy.

And so we begin to chat, I ask her about the toys she brought along, the bible colouring-in book she’s working on and her favourite thing to do at school.

‘Circle time,’ she says to me proudly.

‘What’s that?’ I ask, adding that I thought it was probably something like pass-the-parcel and that that sounded like fun to me.

‘Oh no,’ says the mother, ‘it’s word and picture recognition time. She loves it. She’s homeschooled.’

And then she gave me an ‘I feel sorry for you because it is clear you’re not going to offer your daughter the same opportunities smile’ and stopped talking to me.

Yeah?

Well I made Q a book of the alphabet and numbers. 

If that’s not word and picture recognition I don’t know what is.

Clearly this is a zig-zag & zucchini for the letter Z,
I know, I should be an artist.

QANTAS TRAVEL LEGEND. PS, SHE'S A GIRL.

We’re back.

And we survived.

And so did Qantas.

And so did all the passengers around us because Q was a TOTAL TRAVEL LEGEND.

Seriously. I had very low expectations for this trip.

For the eternal optimist, even I was perilously close to being pessimistic.

I had visions of Q yelling the entire time she had to sit in my lap with the seatbelt on because she doesn’t like to sit still ever and most definitely doesn’t like to sit still when someone else tells her to.

She’s a punk.

I know I’ll admire that individuality and spirit when she’s 30, but not when stuck in a floating tin can with no escape from the few hundred strangers who look at you with undisguised anguish the second you enter your seat.

Instead, she sat quietly and read the distraction book I made her, then the second the seatbelt light went off, she was down, bear crawling up and down the aisles, hooning about the galley and introducing herself to the rest of the plane.

The only drawback being that her mother had to engage in banal conversations with complete strangers:

‘No, she’s a girl. I thought the pink striped pants might give it away.’

‘Yes, she is an active thing.’

‘You’re right, it is a unique crawling style, but I’m sure she’ll manage to walk when she’s ready. Thank you for showing your concern though, despite a complete lack of knowledge on the subject.'

for eleven out of fourteen hours.

That’s right, she only slept for 3.

But she didn’t yell, so while I was so tired it physically hurt to keep my eyelids open, inside I was cheering because my child had exceeded expectations I hadn’t even dared to imagine.

Travelling with a small, mobile human is not an activity I’d recommend for your health or sanity, but miraculously I managed to keep the slim grip on both that I already had.

New York adventures to follow, right now my insatiable appetite needs to be addressed. Again. 

Q tends to go for the familiar when we travel and that would be the two boobs she’s had a love affair with since the second she turned up.

I AM STARVING. I have to go. There is not enough food in the house.

Qs' crawl. Knees don't touch the ground.  Life in the fast lane, just the way she likes it.

QANTAS, JOHN TRAVOLTA & ANZAC BISCUITS. NYC HERE WE COME!

In 5 sleeps time we will be boarding a plane bound for LA, then after a 2 day pit stop, will board another plane bound for that wonderful town, my old stomping ground, NYC.

With our 11 month-old daughter.

Our 11 month-old daughter who doesn’t even like to sit in the pram long enough for her mother to get her daily takeaway coffee. The daily coffee that helps her mother survive because by this time (7.30 in the morning) she has already been up for at least 2 hours.

WHAT AM I GOING TO DO WITH HER FOR FOURTEEN HOURS IN A FLYING TIN CAN?????

Don’t worry. I’ve been getting prepared.

I’ve bought countless snacks and squeezy food. Pear and lentils anyone?

I’ve never bought her packaged food before. Not because I’m an ultra-organic granola mum, but because I’m a tight arse. I can boil and puree my own food thank you very much.

Not sure Q will even go for it though as her independent streak means she’s been feeding herself since she first started to eat.

It also means every meal requires a stack hat and a drop sheet. 

Neither of which is possible on a plane of course, so I shall just wear a poncho from here to LA to catch all her mess.

Distraction Quilt is ready. And no, those buttons will never come off. I’m not a good sewer - or a neat one for that matter – but those buttons are going nowhere.

Then my ambitions got far beyond my abilities and I made her a distraction book.

Clearly that is a lion. And a lollipop. Not that she has any idea what either of those things are.

No, that is not a black woman’s breast as my husband guessed. Obviously it is an ice cream. Although again, perhaps not a good choice as she doesn’t know what that is either.

That’s a nose, as if you can’t tell. And a nail.

Necklace and noodle and other easy things like that only just occurred to me.

That is cellophane stuck to the page in strips.

The book has a lot more pages than there are letters in the alphabet. So after I did the numbers I was really digging deep.

I’ve also got a couple of real books, made by professionals. Although they’re also ones that make noise, which could possibly royally piss off the people around us, and is why I’ve made them all disarm-them bags, to be given out as soon as we board. It’s hard to hate someone who gives you a gift.

They will be filled with chewing gum, lollies, earplugs and in the spirit of Australia, Anzac Biscuits.

I’ve got plenty of nappies, (no, we’re not taking the cloth ones. Can you imagine the stench of one of those babies by the time it gets to NYC. Talk about weapons of mass destruction) outfits, blankets, bibs, washcloths, and of course the requisite baby panadol. The adult version is a couple of stiff gin and tonics, my preferred in-flight beverage.

I’ve been tweeting with @QantasAirways who assure me no strikes are planned for Sunday, but have also probably red-flagged us to be moved up the back near the toilet.

Other than that, we’re just gonna wing it (ha ha) and hope for the best. 

As long as she’s allowed to crawl up and down the aisle ad infinitum we should be ok. 

I hope.

If only we had our own private jet…