Look out Tooth Fairy, here comes Anna

Yay! The Tooth Fairy needs to update her records, 'cos Anna's first tooth has sprung the nest! Exactly where it should be, apparently (bottom LHS); she's such a little textbook. She's being all coy and won't let me look at it (she lets me feel it alright, though!), but I've seen it through my tricky use of superior technology that she is too young to know about yet – I let her grab 'n' gum my glasses, then I can see the teensy tiny spiky thing as she's chewing on the lens. (Yes, I know it's glass: I'm expecting a raid from the child protection squad any minute now).

I can only see the spectacle via the spectacles: how terribly post-modern and allegorical.

For some insane reason, I feel immensely proud. Ridiculous really, as I haven't done anything at all apart from keep Anna alive for the past 6 months – and lets face it, despite my frequent fears that I have stuffed it up irreparably, it can't be too difficult given that your average sloth can manage it on its two-hour per day schedule. Anna herself hasn't even done anything, except guzzle the boobs I keep shoving at her and look in wonder at everything and keep me on an endless guessing game about how many minutes she will sleep at any given nap time. This is obviously enough, though, to produce a glorious shining tooth, and I am one proud mama.

Immunising

In Australia there is a group of parents who choose not to immunise their babies and children. I accept this decision as being right for them, and I will (and often do) defend their right to make these decisions based on what they believe is in the best interests of their children. This is one of the joys of living in a democratic society where freedom of speech and information means that we, as citizens, enjoy the privilege of being able to make such decisions that affect our day to day lives.

I have chosen to immunise my child. I have made this decision based on what I believe is the best interests of my child.

I will not ever, privately or publicly, denigrate those parents who choose not to immunise. I will not try to impose my will on them in an effort to convince them to change their minds. I respect that they have made an informed choice and that it is their right to do so.

Is it too much to ask for the same in return?

Why should I ever be placed in a situation where I am defending my right to choose to have my child immunised? Why should I find myself having to counter the ludicrous suggestion that it is the immunised children of Australia that cause the non-immunised to catch terrible diseases? Why is it that the people who choose not to immunise in the name of freedom of choice do not practice the same levels of tolerance that they demand?

Why do I need to ask these questions in Australia, in 2006, of the same people who, generally, espouse a better and more accepting world for all?

Two brave girls

Anna had her 6 month immunisations today and, brave warrior girl child that she is, she hardly cried. Well… not much, anyway. I think it was a bit more painful though then the last two, judging by the volume of the crying if not the length, and I reckon it's because the muscle is building up in her chubby legs. Poor little sausage. I've explained to her that she's safe from the outbreak of measles that's happening in Perth at the moment, but she didn't seem too impressed. She'll thank me when she's older, I expect.

What's more, I didn't cry either! I'm well proud of myself. At the first round of needles when Anna was three months I cried more than she did (I'm sure she looked faintly embarrassed as we left the clinic), with the second lot the tears were welling but I stoically managed to hold them back, and today I was dry-eyed. Obviously, I am turning into a hard hearted old bag day by day – or it might have had something to do with the migraine that has been brewing for the last 48 hours, making me feel sorrier for myself and less sorry for others!

There's no place like home

Whewee! Arrived home yesterday from our camping trip with part of the family to Jurien Bay, and Anna and I are both camp-dirty, shell-shocked, and happy. Took us 12 hours to get back! – we were required to stage a heroic rescue due to disastrous gear box blow out on sister's car – and even then we only made it as far as the folks house. Who cared by then, certainly not I, it was paradise just to be in a real bed in a real room with four real walls, instead of thin silky stuff. I was obviously not a Mongul invader warrior woman, or a nomadic Arabian Bedouin, in any previous lives.

Camping with a six month old? No worries! Anna was amazing, a bit freaked out for the first couple of days but then who could blame her – coming from our quiet little home consisting of each other and Bud, we were suddenly sharing space with three cousins, two grandparents, an aunt and an uncle. And love 'em all as I do, that side of the family tree are loud! I had to escape once myself to the onsite café, where I huddled in the corner with my book and a coffee and pretended I was not connected to anybody.

By the end of the week, Anna was in everyone's hearts and everyone was in hers, except for Uncle Andre who spent all week being very nice to her and not complaining much at all when all she ever did was cry every time he went near her.

I couldn't show off Anna's swimming skills as the water was damn cold; just going for a paddle took all the will power I could muster. And nobody caught any fish, but we saw one cool sea lion and a huge sting ray, and the Pinnacles were as stunning as ever.

The best bit for Anna was having her granddad there to walk around with and sing to her every day. The best bit for me? I sound like a tired old house drudge but I don't care: how nice it was to sit back with a cup of tea and my feet up, having just eaten a meal I hadn't cooked from plates I hadn't washed. What heaven.

Patience of a...

We are off on an Easter camping trip tomorrow to Jurien Bay and so today, Anna and I went out shopping with the folks. Can I just say now, what an angelic baby I have? If she was a monster, or even a slightly normal baby, today would have been the perfect day to have arced up, but for four hours she was sweet, adorable, and fully interested in the day's proceedings with no stressful screamy moments. She checked out the animals in the pet shop, she did lunch, she had a snooze in Woolies, she chewed thoughtfully on her bumble bee while we discussed the merits of feta vs. Gouda for camp salads, and not once did she complain.

What a saint I have given birth to. Even if we did have a scary moment where I thought she wasn't going to settle tonight at all, she's still a dead set legend.

Incoming

Anna and I went to our first 8-year old birthday party two nights ago and we have only just recovered. It gave me a frightening taste of what I should be steeling myself for in 7 ½ years time. I think I might need that long to psyche myself up. I like to think I was not the only adult there who breathed a great big long sigh of relief when the kids were finally and firmly ensconced in front of 'Ice Age' on the DVD – what did parents do before video and DVD's were invented? – and then took a moment to reflect on how peaceful and quiet everything suddenly seemed.

Full marks to the mother of the birthday boy, who organised a superb Treasure Hunt, complete with torches (it was an evening party), incorporating lots of running around the park opposite and which culminated in the finding of a box of treasure containing a goodie bag for each child– not one single kiddie had been forgotten, either in the park or in the distribution of goodies, which I think shows a Herculean effort in the planning department. There was even one for Anna, which I declined because I don't know when her memory kick-starts and I don't want her to be developing a taste for impossible standards that I will doubtless fall short of for the rest of my life.

On the subject of short cuts, which I am a big fan of, there was an example of the best party hint for ice-cream cake on the planet: buy a big 4 litre tub of ice cream, run it under hot water and invert it onto a big plate, squirt chocolate Ice Magic everywhere, decorate the bottom with whipped cream (or in this case, mini Easter eggs), and bung the required number of candles on top. The kids love it and they have no idea that it is not a cake from a fancy shop which has cost you a king's ransom, and which melts at exactly the same pace.

8 year old boys are quite difficult to buy for, I discovered. Especially if you don't know the boy all that well, and especially if you are having a short week and can't afford to throw a lot of moola around. A friend of mine recommended a water pistol as being a sure-fire gift for any boy under the age of 96, offering hours of entertainment at relatively little cost. It sounded sensible but I thought the boy's mother was likely to be someone who disapproves of toy guns and I didn't want to run the risk. (I can't think now why I didn't just ring her and find out what he wanted….) So I took the safe bet and bought a yo-yo instead.

It went down a treat. Being 8, the young lad made a ferociously concentrated effort to learn how to use a yo-yo for about three minutes. Then it was discarded for a while, long enough to whoop and yell a lap around the back garden with his mates, until the light bulb moment happened and the realisation made that whooping and yelling laps around the garden with your mates was much more thrilling if one was hanging on to the string end of a yo-yo and waving the hard, tooth-cracking, nose-breaking end around your head, like a psychotic organic helicopter who's eaten too much sugar. At least no-one was in any danger of losing an eye – very bad bruising was on the cards, yes, but you'd have to have been very unlucky indeed to actually lose it altogether.

I think, as ideologically dodgy as they may be, a humble water pistol would have been physically safer.

Plottings

It was Anna's monthly weigh-in today and she's leapt up to 6.5kg – no wonder my back is starting to hurt. She has now hit the giddy heights of the 25th percentile.

Babies are not allowed to grow these days without being measured, weighed, and plotted on graphs. It's a wonder the human species ever managed to become as prolific as it has, considering all those babies born before we invented tape measures and scales were just expected to grow ad hoc. Poor little souls, doing it all on their own like that, makes you really feel for them.

The graphs work on some sort of a standardised (standardised for where? I've never thought to ask that, and I'll be well pissed if I discover it's for America or Britain) percentile chart which plots the baby's weight, and I've got one which plots length and head circumference too, and we parents are expected to keep these charts safe and secure, and carry them around with us at all times just in case we happen to come across a doctor or health nurse or other pertinent member of society, who all need to inspect these charts. Woe betide us if we forget them, or lose them, or accidentally slop coffee on them. (And I shudder to think of the repercussions of those parents who refuse to fill them in – I know I am not brave enough to risk the wrath of Those Who Know Things by ignoring them.) These percentile ranges are another way of saying 'average growth', but they don't like to use that term because it runs the risk of making us new parents feel secure about our babies being average.

Instead, they use terms such as "in the top 90th percentile", "the 50th percentile", etc. I suppose it works for all those parents whose babies are in the top 90th, because then they can feel smug and happy that they are at least getting something right. For those of us, though, whose darling little ones are languishing about in the "bottom 10th percentile", it's a different story. We have to chant desperately "She's OK and she's alive, she's OK and she's alive, she's OK and she's alive" in the waiting rooms of the health nurse (they give you at least 10 minutes past your appointment time, just for this purpose) so that we are strong enough to withstand the doubtless well-meaning, yet contradictory comments, regarding the issue of lack of 'proper' weight gain. We have to learn to not fly immediately into anxiety attacks in the face of comments such as "she's only a wee little thing, isn't she? She' s only in the 10th percentile, that's nothing to worry about, but bring her back next week and we'll check again just in case", and we have to learn to clench our teeth and breath deeply while we ask, just in case what? And we need to continue to breath deeply while resisting the urge to scream when we are told, "nothing, dear, nothing to worry about. But bring her back anyway…"

I don't go to the health nurses anymore. I felt a bit out of control and thought it was dangerous to their health for me to keep visiting. I get Anna weighed once a month at the local chemist, and she gets her immunisations at our doctor, and if she's ever sick I'll take her there too. And I remind other mothers of "wee little things" I meet that percentile charts are just another fancy name for averages, and that as long as our babies are within the healthy average range, it doesn't matter whether they are big average or small average. And we can feel smug about the fact that our wee little things can stay in their uber cute baby outfits longer than the others, and are a lot more forgiving on our backs.

Six months old today!

Today I am officially the mother of a 6 month old. I'm really proud of that (because we are both still alive, we manage a giggle fairly often, and the dog has not left home in disgust) but I'm a bit nervous too, because I think it means I will have to stop referring to Anna as 'my newborn baby' whenever I am using her as a handy excuse for, oh, just about everything I do that's bad (forgetting to ring people back, not paying bills) or everything I should be doing that is good (preparing nutritious meals every night, separating my whites). It is well and truly time I started behaving like a responsible grown up person. You can see why I'm shitting myself a bit.

Yesterday, Anna celebrated her ½ anniversary by sitting up on her own for the first time. I got fed up with the barren, prickle-fest that I fondly call my back yard, and took her down to the Rockingham foreshore where they have real grass and you can sit in comfort and safety, knowing that you are not about to be attacked by a Redback spider or a late season dugite, or carried off by overzealous ants or, at the very least, endure twelve hundred double gee's embedded in your arse. At Rockingham, the nearest thing you get to danger is if the seagulls fighting over the food you are not throwing them accidentally come too close and crap on you in their haste to get away again. Anna thought they were fantastic.

She sits like a cartoon dog, legs splayed out for balance and hands down in front, saving her from an embarrassing face-plant. It's gorgeous. Yes I know, all babies probably sit like this the first time, but mine is special, alright? Because she's mine.

Long time, no Farex

Farex has made a sloppy entry back into my life after an absence of many, many years. I can remember loving the stuff as a child and due to having a soft-hearted mother, was probably eating it long past the age when most kids would have moved on to Weetbix or Cornflakes. Alas and alack, my excitement at having a box legitimately parked in my pantry was short lived as I tasted the teaspoonful I'd prepared for Anna – yuck! There goes another dreamy childhood memory, smashed to smithereens.

Fortunately, Anna seems to love the stuff. The first day I made it with just water (being disorganised I tried it for the evening supper, so my breasts were in no mood to oblige with expressing) and Anna ate half of the teaspoon. The next two days, I've made it at lunch time with breast milk and she's scoffed the lot. And oh, what a whole new world I can see opening up in front of me – mealtimes are suddenly not going to be a quick 10 minutes on the run from the organic milk bar; and the mess! When Anna was first born I found myself with a load of bibs that I'd been given, and after a couple of days of me putting them on her because I thought that's what one did with a baby, and taking them off again almost pristine (Anna is not really big on possiting), I wondered what all the fuss was about in the bib department. Ohmigod, now I know! I don't know how it's possible, but there seemed to be more Farex smeared around Anna's mouth and dribbling down on to her bib than was made up in the first place. It must double in quantity on contact with baby saliva, a bit like yeast with air.

My plan is to give Anna Farex for one meal a day, a bit of smashed up fruit or vegies the next, and have breast feeds perhaps 4 meals a day. Oh, what luxury! I can feel my boobs sighing with relief at the idea. No more feeding every 2 hours! Anna will be 6 months old next week and so that means I have – ta da, drum roll please – achieved my goal of breast feeding for at least the first 6 months. From now on, I’m taking it month by month with NO GUILT allowed if I decide to call it a day. Anna is the wriggliest baby ever on the boob, (when she was very young I actually got the health nurse to watch me feeding because I thought she was fitting every time she ate, she squirmed so much), so breastfeeding has not been the calming, floaty bonding opportunity that the Kleenex ad's make it out to be.

If a tree falls in a forest

Here's a baby related philosophical topic for discussion: if a child says 'Da Da, Da Da', when there is no father around to hear it, does it still count as a first word?

And there's an interesting behavioural point. There is nobody about in our household to encourage Anna to "say Dad! Go on, say Da Da! Da Da!" but this has not stopped her from saying it anyway. So obviously Da Da from a baby doesn't mean 'I love you, big warm hairy person who is good for cuddles but doesn't have milk', it means nothing more than 'hey, I am practising my sounds and look what noise I can make now'.

Sorry to all those loving fathers out there who may now be feeling a bit disillusioned… if it makes you feel any better, I think I know where the Mum Mum "words" come from too – it’s the noise babies learn to make at mealtimes when they really want to open wide and let out a bit screamy sound, but can't because when they do someone shoves a plastic thing full of weird-tasting stuff inside.