Helen Loves Anna

Sometimes my girl is such a boy

2006-09-03T12:17:00.000+08:00

Hello and welcome back. Sorry for the prolonged absence but I have been very busy in a complicated and deadly serious dance of mothering and counter-mothering; all well oiled by endless cups of tea. I sometimes feel I am stuck in a modern version of the Mad Tea Party: the conversations around here tend to bounce along in the same way as the March Hare and the Hatter's (Anna, I suppose, is the Dormouse, without all the pinching and tea-dunking). Although unlike Alice, I haven’t just wandered in accidentally. Being a member of the original line up I have to claim equal responsibility for the machinations of the whole complicated business. That really sucks, because there is not much I like better than to be able to say that something was someone else's fault.

I have also been spending far too much energy being vile to everyone around me. I am more irritable now than I ever was at the height of my hormonal carnival of a pregnancy, so I think the sooner I find some little home of my own to live in the better everyone’s lives will be.

Anna quite likes it here. If she is aware of the maelstrom of obsessive caring raging around her, then she is not letting on. It’s hardly surprising she is enjoying herself; there are now two people close at hand to adore her, and one of them never fails to coo and cluck over every little thing she does, which is obviously a nice surprise for her. I’m expecting her to be totally ruined by the time we leave.

On occasions, I am convinced that Anna is an absolute child prodigy, and I spend many a happy hour imagining the unimaginable wealth that will surely come my way when she bursts on to the world with her genius. At other times, she reminds me that she is a perfectly ordinary baby who is not yet in full control of all her mental faculties and quite possibly will put off staging a take-over bid for some time.

Like in the bath the other night. My mother has what is called a Roman Bath (which as far as I can see is a fancy way of saying they’ve built a little wall along the open side of the shower recess and laid tiles everywhere). The bath taps and the spout stick out along one side of the wall at about perfect head height for Anna, and on this particular Bart Simpson moment she’d manoeuvred herself so that she was leaning against the wall with her head between one tap and the spout. By turning her head very slightly from side to side, (it was a comfy fit) she could see first tap, then spout, then tap, etcetera etcetera. I could tell by the grin on her face that this is what passes for thrilling entertainment for a young ‘un. Then she tipped her head slightly from side to side, and oh, the thrill! when she felt the corresponding rubs of tap and spout on her little bonce. Then – in what I can only describe, very lovingly, as an act of pure and mindless stupidity – right before my incredulous eyes she banged her head very deliberately, first one side, then the other, on the two very hard objects on either side of her. In case I am not making myself clear: the two very hard objects that not a minute earlier she'd been looking at and had then carefully tested, with her own head, for solidity.

Amongst all the ensuing wailing and the soothing and the cuddles and the ‘there theres’, I knew I was faking it. I’m sorry, Chicky, but love you as I do, it is just not possible for me to muster up any sympathy for that sort of behaviour.

The changing face of Anna

2006-08-25T20:24:00.000+08:00

Now that Anna has three and a bit top teeth, her face is starting to look much more like a little girl's face and much less like a scrunchy little baby's face. (Sob! My baaaaayyyybbbbeeeee is growing up!) And every now and then I catch a glimpse of someone altogether much more grown up, and I think I can see what she is going to look like when she's older.

Or maybe not. Here's who she's resembled so far:

When her hair is wet and it's plastered against her skull, she looks like Ralph Wiggum (Chief Wiggum's dorky son) from The Simpsons.

When she's looking at something which amuses her but also impresses the shit out of her, she looks just like Sharon Strezleki, the

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

2006-08-21T10:56:00.000+08:00

Do you know what I hate? I hate women who quiz each other endlessly about their husbands’ domestic skills, or lack thereof, with the winner being those who have the most Neanderthal, couldn’t-find-the-oven-with-a-map-and-a-guide-dog bloke. For starters, I bet most of these men are not even as bad as they sound. I bet they are perfectly capable in the kitchen and laundry; otherwise, surely they would have starved to death between leaving home and getting shacked up? At the very least their clothes would have been so revoltingly smelly they'd never have made it to the altar. Newsflash: they are not useless, girls, they are just in a relationship that is gleefully - even proudly , for Pete's sake - based on deep stereotypes, which at least one of you is not willing to change.

Secondly, at what point is it cool for these martyr wives to be proud of being married to couch potatoes? If it were me, I'd be keeping my mouth well and truly shut until I'd had a few little matrimonial discussions of an egalitarian theme.

Most of all I can’t stand it when women refer to their men as being ‘house trained’ (or not). What happened to those vows of respect, girls? Did you think it was just old-fashioned twaddle that was not relevant anymore? More to the point, do you think you can really demand any kind of respect for yourself, when you give him so damn little?

I'm sleeping in a Professor's bed!

2006-08-18T15:10:00.000+08:00

Well, it is an ex-Professor’s bed, or a Professor’s ex-bed.

I realised this at some ridiculous time last night as I was walking around the bed, gazing longingly at its giddy expanse of softness and electric-blanketed warmth, attempting to comfort a grizzling child who did not want to be comforted but most certainly did not want to go back in the Portacot either, thank you very much. I was musing on the obscure little ways the future can unfold: the bed originally belonged to a senior academic at my University, at whose lectures I avidly took notes (clearly, I took her units in the early days, back when I was eager and fresh and actually took notes in lectures. And listened. And never, ever, dozed off). In my learning frenzy, it would not have occurred to me that one day I would be stalking back and forth at the foot of her bed, near to swooning at the thought of soon being able to get in it. (I bet she never realised it either, otherwise I suspect I would be adding ‘Restraining Order’ to the list of strange things I have seen in my life). Here is a little known fact: academics are people too; and this particular one is a good friend of my mother’s. Hence my mother now owns the bed, which once belonged to the Professor but was a casualty of another house move, and which I am now sleeping in (although I have stretched the definition of ‘sleeping’).

I’m in it because of a monumentally gallant act on the part of my mother: that of giving up her bedroom – and everything in it – to Anna and I, and relegating herself to the single bed in the spare room, with both the dogs. (This is a classic example of selfless motherhood that I feel I must try to live up to, despite the fact I know damn well I am never going to make it). It’s a bold and cunning plan designed to allow me to relax, unwind, and catch up on sleep, sort of like a private little health spa in the burbs, but the plot has been foiled by Anna’s refusal to get with the program and sleep angelically or, more to the point, with longevity. I may have to start investigating traditional remedies such as laudanum, or a bit of brandy in warm milk: my favourite, for obvious there’s-a-whole-bottle-of-brandy-left reasons.

Despite the tantalising headline to this post, there is no one else in the bed with me. (Well, I am at my mother’s after all – it is most certainly not because I have not yet managed to find myself a suitable man-like object to place around the house. I'll have you know that I haven't really started looking yet). One of the very many reasons why this is a shame is that further to yesterday’s grim underwear realisation, I went out and bought new gear. This morning I put on my brand new white bra with brand new white matching knickers, neither of them the fade-to-grey colour that usually pass as whites in my life, and it occurred to me that despite the bags under my eyes, I probably looked about as good as I am going to get for the foreseeable future. Certainly the best I have been for a year or so. And there was no one there to see me. Except Anna, and it being breakfast time, she was none too happy at seeing the bra.

Uprooted and homeless

2006-08-17T11:16:00.000+08:00

Did I mention moving sucks? I have just done it; or more accurately, my family did it around me while I ran around weeping and wailing about how much I hate it. They packed, cleaned, cooked, weeded, and kid wrangled until I suddenly looked around and realised it was all done. Utter legends, the lot of them. To think I spent 6 years living in a completely different country from those guys and spent the better part of all of those years not just functioning perfectly well, but moving about a fair bit as well. The moving part was a la backpack and sleeping bag, so my possessions were few and as light as I could manage (slim novels became all the rage), and thus even in the middle of a complete hung-over, time-challenged, disorganised meltdown, even I struggled to really jeopardise a move in any meaningful way.

I think it is safe to say that that was a different time, involving an altogether different, carefree and responsibility-less self. I have discovered, for instance, that I have packed for storage all of my fully elasticised and functional underwear, and left myself nothing to actually wear but the scaggy embarrassments that should have been thrown long ago. It’s the same story with my bras; I have nothing save for the scaggy embarrassment I dubbed, in some fit of twisted logic, my ‘moving bra’, (because surely if you don’t need extra-good boob support while hefting, sweeping and scrubbing, you don’t need it at all?), so I will have no choice but to morph into a saggy titted hippy mama for a couple of weeks. (I could buy some more, of course, but my Inner Tightarse is screaming that there are perfectly good ones still in storage and that a couple of weeks is not such a long time). Worse than all this, I still can’t find the brilliant bees wax stuff-in-a-tin which is all Anna needs to sooth her red bum back into a more fetching shade of pink, and which I distinctly remember putting somewhere safe because I knew I’d need it. Naturally, she got a bad case of red arse the first night we were here. Luckily, I am living in a proper mother’s house, because a quick rummage through the first aid box (note to myself: get a first aid box, you slattern!) and I found some ancient gooey soothy stuff which looked grossly yellow but worked fine.

Yep, having a breakdown about moving out of one house and having a breakdown about finding a new house to move into was way beyond even my considerable drama queen talents, so Anna and Bud and I are bunking in with my mum and her dog until a new house presents itself. So far, we have not fallen out, which is pretty impressive when you consider we have two fiercely independent set-in-their-ways women, one teething baby who has developed an intense dislike of being in Portacots longer than three hours at a time, day or night, and two fiercely irreplaceable set-in-their-ways dogs, all squished into one two-bedroom duplex. Of course, it’s only been three days, but each hour that goes past without an increase in the West Australian homicide rate is a credit to us all.

Even more impressive than this, given our predilection for sweet things and slothing, we have only had one pizza and ice cream night, which means healthy and home cooked is so far winning 2 to 1.

Census

2006-08-08T22:07:00.000+08:00

I love a good Census. Really, I mean it; I am such a phenomenal dork that I love filling in forms and, as far as forms go, the Census is top of the heap. I got so excited when the Census guy came to drop off my form, he nearly fell down the porch steps as he took a frightened step backwards. (Actually, my most favourite form so far is Anna's birth certificate, but I will forever lament the fact that I was so whacked out and dazed from the enormity of brand new motherhood I came over all official and actually put my real job – admin goon, and I didn't even write that – under the 'mother's occupation' box. I wish I could turn back time to that day and put something interesting in there, like Cartoonist or Fur Trapper.) This year the Census can even be done online; that's called filling in forms on the internet, folks, and it just doesn't get much better than that.

I can't handle people who don't do the Census. It shits me. More specifically, I can't handle people who don't do the Census and then have a whinge when something happens in their neighbourhood that they don't like. It's like people who don't vote and then whinge about the government. Hey, have you got small children and the funding for childcare in your suburb gets slashed? Do you rely on public transport, and the local bus route is cancelled? Are you on a low income, and the local co-op is closed? And you didn't do your Census? Well, don't come whining to me, bucko, 'cos you got what's coming. Let's make it clear: if you don't fill in your Census form, you are writing yourself out of existence. I normally really, really hate having to defend governments, 'specially this one we've got right now, but if they don't know what you need they can't be expected to provide it. Politicians don't have ESP (sadly, otherwise a certain PM who looks a little like Toad of Toad Hall but with not as many cool friends would not be able to sleep at night from the furious cosmic screaming in his ears) and there's no better way to test a party's mettle than to let it know loud and clear what a community wants, then sit back and see what it does.

Tonight's Census form also presented me with my first conundrum regarding Anna's paternal lineage. One of the questions was regarding ancestry, and you were only allowed to pick two. Mine is boringly simple – I am a mix of English, Welsh and a little bit of Irish – but one of the things I do know about her Donor Dude is that he was born in an entirely different and much more exotic part of Europe. So, given that he is not in any way a part of our lives, did I put his half of the ancestry on her tally or keep it all the same as mine? I asked my Coven friends the other night at a dinner party we had to celebrate a new dining table and most of them agreed that I should put Anna's lineage down to correspond with mine. Their argument was something along the lines of: a) her father is not in our lives, and I am, b) I am doing all the work, c) ergo, me and my heritage deserve to be the One and Only. Although I do respect their opinions enormously, I ignored them completely on this occasion and put down the Dude's ancestry as part of Anna's ancestry. I thought that even though he is not in our lives, and does not, in fact, even know of our existence, we know of his, and what we know of him belongs to her. She is going to grow up knowing so very little about her father that it seems just a bit unfair to erase the snippets we have.

And anyway, it makes her way cooler than 'English and Welsh'.

The Universe tells me its time to leave

2006-08-06T13:32:00.000+08:00

I have been planing on moving house for a couple of months now for a few reasons, mainly to do with the fact that the house we live in right now sucks and the owners are not interested in doing anything, however small and cost effective and contrary to their promises, to relieve some of its general suckiness. So after 18 months of waiting and hoping, I am not interested any more in faithfully paying their mortgage every bloody fortnight. I am also bored of this neighbourhood and should probably never have moved here in the first place as it is 30 minutes from my old stomping ground where I grew up and where I want Anna to grow up. Half an hour is a long time between friends, and petrol prices are not looking like coming down any time soon. Again, nobody warned me about this. Every time a woman gets a pregnancy confirmed, they should be given a pamphlet telling them that they are not allowed to move while they are pregnant or for at least six months following the birth. Their hormones are all up the shit and they get an obsessive nesting instinct which compels them to make ridiculous real estate decisions not based on any known laws of common sense. I had a perfectly nice share house in a perfectly lovely inner city suburb close to absolutely everything and as soon as I knew I was up the duff I threw it all away for an enormous run down fibro box out in the boondocks with sand and weeds in the place where usually is found a back yard. Sheer madness.

My decision to move was altogether compounded the other night when I arrived home after dark, and noticed that I had inadvertently left my bedroom lamp light on. One of the things that doesn't work in this house (apart from the obvious: my brain) is my bedroom blind, which is an old crappy plastic Venetian thing with a broken wand so I can't close it all the way to shut. When I moved in, as well as accepting in good faith the owners' promise to replace it, I checked from the outside to make sure that no one could see in and because they couldn't I reasoned that it wasn't too bad and I could put up with it for a little bit until a new one arrived. It didn't occur to me to go outside and check it after dark, which is a shame, because the other night as I drove up the street and saw my lamp light blazing through I realised that I could see right into my bedroom. My mirror, the clothes rack, the bedroom door, the whole lot. The only thing I couldn't see was me, but only because I was at that moment stopped dead in the street behind the wheel of my car, mortified, trying to work out how many actual open-to-the-public nights there are in the 18 months I have been here, undressing and dog arranging and doing other night time ready for bed things. I was in such a state of shock it took a while for me to realise that I can't do maths and so can't come up with a definite answer but the point is, there are lots.

I asked my neighbour the next day, she whose kitchen window is - unfortunately for her – right opposite my bedroom, if she realised that my useless broken blind was as thin as a tissue, and she suddenly got interested in some fascinating thing on the ground near her foot and said that, actually, she hadn't really noticed. In other words, YES, the poor woman has been trying to not look out her kitchen window for the past year and a half. Most importantly: WHY didn't she say anything? Did she think I was displaying on purpose? What do they think of me around here? At least now I know why the Christian charity mob doesn't deliver free milk to my door any more.

So. It's time to fly this crazy coop. I haven't been updating the blog for a while, partly because I've been grumpy and also because I have been stupendously busy not packing or organising removalists or, oh yeah, finding somewhere else to live. Hee hee. It's all happening next Monday and I have packed not one single cup, not one single sweaty fat man with a truck has been booked, and my forwarding address is the spare room at my mother's.

I have a Gold medal in procrastination and eleventh hour panic attacks.

Ouch

2006-07-24T16:01:00.000+08:00

I don't wanna be a mother today. I'm over it. I'm bored making food that doesn't get eaten and I'm bored of needing to be touched every three minutes. I'm bored of hoping for an extra long nap and getting an extra short one instead. So I've done what every sensible, mature person would do: I've shut the door on myself and the dependents and I'm wallowing on the computer. I can hear Anna having a little whinge but I can also hear the toys clanging and clunking as she plays, or throws them around in frustration, so I know she's still breathing. Bud is sulking because I got annoyed at him today: one two many whines from him pushed me over the edge, somewhat. (I'm sorry it's pissing it down outside, Bud, but I can't do anything about it. It's horrible out there and I'm not going out. You, on the other hand, are more than welcome to go out, but I'm not standing here holding the bloody door open for hours and I'm not going out with you. I'll melt.)

In the good bad old days, this would be the time that I'd drag my arse off down to the shops for a tub of lardy guts triple choc heart by-pass ice cream, without even bothering to get out of slippers, then I'd eat the whole lot in front of Oprah or Judge Judy and flake out feeling sick all afternoon. Now I have to pretend that I am a responsible adult and, ye gods, it's only 3pm so I have a whole afternoon to fill with something interesting before I can legitimately expect Anna to go to sleep again.

This wasn't what I expected of motherhood. Why am I counting the hours to sleep time? Why am I not enjoying every single moment of wake time? When did I turn into such a drudge?

This is what happened yesterday:

There we were, having a nice civilised coffee and games afternoon at The Moon Café, when Anna BIT ME. Not while feeding or anything (holy crap that would have made me sing) but, almost as bad, right on the fleshy part of my arm. With the full force of her sharp new little teeth. With no provocation at all. It bloody hurt. And it even left a most impressive bruise which I showed to everyone and we all agreed that she should be immediately ~~flogged and sent down the mines~~ cuddled and comforted greatly because she was S-C-R-E-A-M-I-N-G, owing to the fact that I had shouted, at her, for the first time ever in her life.

(Actually, that's a lie. In order to present a realistic version of motherhood and not participate in the grossly unfair myth of new parenting being all fluffy and loving, all the time, I will hereby admit that I have shouted at Anna on two other occasions. Both were when she was a lot younger (before three months, sadly) and were at that time in her life when she would often cry, loudly, for a couple of hours at a time. I shouted 'Shut up! What's wrong with you!' or something equally helpful, then took myself off outside to water the garden for some time out. Crying myself at the utter wretchedness of my whole life. Naturally I am not especially proud of these episodes, however I know that they are very, very common in stressed out new parents, and I know that as long as no physical harm occurs, the babies do not suffer any long term trauma at all. Even if they don't obviously help with the crying, I doubt they even rate much of a mention on the short term trauma scale either. If more of us would admit to these less than perfect parenting moments, more of us would not feel the ridiculous pressure to become perfect parents).

Anyway, yesterday I was a lot more specific. I yelled 'Owww! Don't do that!' (which earned me A Look from everyone in the room), and then the wailing began. The poor little bugger, it really shook her up a bit. On the flip side, though, I'm hoping it was a big enough shock that she won't do it again, and there are harder lessons she's going to have to learn.

We all decided that I should take a photo of the teensy teeth-mark bruise and post it to this blog, in order that I can have some leverage over Anna in the future. Unfortunately, I should have taken the photo there and then, as by the time I'd got home the bruise had gone. She's been reading up on her Torturers' Manual, the chapter on Leave No Discriminating Marks.

Dream Weaver

2006-07-23T20:57:00.000+08:00

Do babies dream? Do they have nightmares? If they do, what is it that they find scary, given that they know no fear? If they don't, then what else is it that wakes Anna from a deep sleep to an hysterical scream in 0.4 seconds in the wee small hours, and then renders it near impossible to settle her again?

Of course, I don't know for sure that she goes from deep sleep to scream, maybe she lies there awake for a while. The thought of that is, somehow, even worse. Something's going on though, because normally when she wakes at night she starts off with a low grade grizzle and it will only escalate if I am slack and pushing my luck, lying in bed hoping she'll go back to sleep again. (Why do we do this? I know I am not the only parent who lies awake, making futile deals with any random God who may be tuning in, hoping against all hope – not to mention previous experience – that the crying will magically stop and we won't need to get out of bed. It's the Lotto mentality – everyone knows the odds of winning are impossibly long, but we all play anyway. And, hey, our dreams will come true – sometime between birth and 18 years, a child will stop calling out in the night. They'll stop calling out for us, anyway. Geez Louise, I really hope I have a blokie on board by then, someone who will be willing to prowl around with a bright torch and a defensive attitude, protecting the virtue of his daughter. I am not sure that I am up to the task, mainly because I discarded my own virtue so lightly I don't think I could stand the hypocrisy).

Anyway. Back to dreaming. Anna's Uncle was a chronic sleepwalker and a nightmare sufferer, so maybe these sorts of things are hereditary. If that's the case I will be calling for a total ban on all things sharp and pointy in her room, our family having almost learnt a terrible lesson involving a somnambulant 15 year old boy in the grip of a bad nightmare, a fully loaded gidgee gun, and my not particularly skinny mother trying to calmly talk him down but in the process presenting an impossible-to-miss target. I know this because I was hiding behind the door at the time, simultaneously hissing at my mother to get the hell out of the room, writing her eulogy in my head, and idly wondering in my spare time if "I was asleep at the time, Your Honour" was a good enough plea to escape a 1st degree murder charge. (Thankfully, we never had the chance to find out. My mother is alive and well, and my brother… well, I don't sleep in the same house as him any more, so as far as I'm concerned everything is peachy!)

Nightmares suck. The last lot I had, all hormonally induced, were while I was pregnant and I had various horrible scenarios of losing the dog (I don't need to be Freud to realise there were possible projection issues going on there) and then again right after Anna's birth, when the scene changed slightly to include various people stealing Anna, no doubt related to the signs pasted on every available surface at hospital about not letting your babes be handled by anyone not wearing an I.D. tag. Good advice, probably, but not really the sort of thing that will calm the frayed nerves of the newly-delivered. Before that, I had a cool (cool in a horror can't-watch-but-can't-look-away movie kind of way) bout of nightmares during my trip to Africa, which were brought on by the anti-malarial drug Lariam, only issued after all kinds of bleak warnings about it being known to ward off disease-carrying mosquitos but also not adverse to bringing on nightmares, hallucinations and, for the particularly lucky, psychosis.

All this might make for interesting reminiscing but it doesn't help me when, at 3am, I am trying to comfort a 9 month old with zero language skills by explaining that whatever she is crying about isn't really real, and why doesn't she calm down and come have some nice, warm, sleepy mummy milk? Strangely enough, she doesn't want to hear it.

My other baby

2006-07-21T15:46:00.000+08:00

I got Bud in 2001 as a sprightly 7-year old from the Shenton Park Dog's Home, and let me put paid to the ridiculous rumour that you need to have a dog from puppy age for it to really truly love you. Bud loves me so much his world stops turning if he has to be apart from me for any reason, and he was well into middle age before we met. In fact, I think as far as canine love goes, the opposite is true: puppies are cute and all, but they are so fickle they will love anything and anyone; it's adult dogs (especially the ones from pounds and homes) who are the ones that really take time to get to know you and then make a decision as to whether or not they will make a lasting attachment.

Poor old Bud has had his life turned upside down and inside out, and he didn't even get to have a vote on whether a baby should or should not enter our household. (That's one of the many fabulous things about dog ownership, I've found; it's great for allowing a little bit of tyrannical rule to take place without anyone having to call any authorities). Buddy is an arthritic ball-obsessed 13 year old Staffy/Labrador cross and once upon a time, he was the absolute light of my life, the object of my slavish devotion, and (quite literally during a depressive episode a couple of years ago) the sole reason for me to get out of bed in the morning.

Then in early October last year, Anna was born and from Bud's point of view, everything went to shit.

Bear in mind that Bud still has a pretty terrific life, as far as your average dog goes. He gets walked at least once a day, without fail, which includes a park where he can run off his lead; his dinner biscuits get mixed up with a bit of warm water every night so they're not too dry for him (and when he was eating roo meat mixed in with it, that was microwaved so it was not too cold, being straight from the fridge); he sleeps on a double bed in my bedroom that he is kind enough to share with me (and recently, I bought an electric blanket and I lasted a whole week before I weakened and started turning his side on as well); he has his own Drizabone for the chilly weather. You get the picture: this is no strictly utilitarian biological alarm system we are talking about here. It's just that as Bud didn't think he was your average dog – he thought he was an average person – it has come as a bit of a shock to realise just where in fact he does sit on the food chain.

However, he is still my bestest furry pride and joy, and I would be lost without him even though Anna is here to fill my life to overflowing, and it has occurred to me that anyone reading this blog really would have no idea how big a part of my life he is. Hence, time to rectify the situation and declare publicly: I LOVE MY DOG! The fact that a few weeks ago he got very sick and stopped eating for days, and then threw up uber smelly stomach contents and so we had a panicked visit to the emergency vet hospital, and he underwent major surgery to remove a big lump of plastic (from a very expensive toy, grrr) from his bowel, and it was all very upsetting and teary because I thought he was going to die, and yet I wrote not one word about it on this blog, does not indicate a general give-a-shit factor of nil, it indicates that the whole thing was so very stressful I could not find any way of writing about it without descending into melodramatics and hysteria. It was bad enough that I was doing that in real life on my ever-patient family, let alone making a permanent record of it in a public arena for (potentially) everyone to see.

He has now made a full recovery, the only legacy being a very cool scar on his belly, a stern warning that he is not to eat any bits of plastic again, and a tremendously huge vet bill that I will be paying off until I am old.

One of the things that I have realised is that more than likely, unless Bud lives to be very old indeed, Anna will probably not remember him at all. And because he is such a fabulous dog and such an important part of my life, this makes me quite sad. The relationship between Bud and Anna has been thrown into relief lately due to two events: first, Buddy growled at Anna, and second, Buddy got between Anna and a stranger on the street trying to say hello to her and let it be known that he, stranger, had better not try any funny business otherwise he, Bud, would have something to say about it.

As strange as it sounds, I was quite happy about the growling thing. It means Bud is prepared to give warnings about when he is reaching the end of his tether, and I can teach Anna as she gets older about what growling means. In the meantime, of course, it's up to me to move her out of his face, or to tell him to shove off and get out of the way. And the growl in particular was not of the snarly listen-up-kid-back-off-before-I-eat-you kind, it was of the whiny oh-please-can't-you-just-leave-me-be? variety. It was also when Anna was grabbing his toes and I think that's just too much to ask any dog to have to put up with, so I can't really say as I blame him. The 'stranger getting too close' incident was a happy realisation on my part that despite the growling, and the almost constant interruptions of mine and Anna's floor play time by a wet nose and a slobbery ball, Bud has come to the conclusion that Anna is now a part of the family, and is prepared to make minor adjustments to reflect that.

So all I really need to do now is figure out some way to enable Buddy to live a very long time indeed. If there happen to be any practising genetic scientists out there who want to take a few molecular samples from something to practise growing something else from …… Well, anyway. Maybe I'll think of something else, just in case genetic cloning doesn't take off in a big way for household ~~pets~~ members.

As this post is dedicated to Buddy, and not Anna, I won't mention here that Anna got her third tooth through a little while ago. (Dead on the nine month mark; I think she has started reading my baby how-to manuals.) I will leave that news for some other time.

Beastie Baby

2006-07-19T21:48:00.000+08:00

Thanks to Uncle Ric, I had a big grown up night out last night. I went to a quiz night and insisted I be scribe, which I thought would cleverly hide the fact that I wouldn't actually be answering any questions myself; however no one was more surprised then me when I managed to hold my own (I knew, for instance, that marmalade is Paddington Bear's favourite food, and that was one point the table wouldn't have got had I not been there). I think I might be finally ready to move on from the shock of child birth.

Anna spent the evening with her uncle and they had quite a little party. I found out later they'd played with toys, watched Foxtel, danced in the kitchen while dinner was cooking. Stayed up past bedtime. It must have been fun, because there were no tears (and no fretting about me, which is good in an ego-shattering kind of way).

When I arrived to pick her up, before I discovered how fun it had been, I could hear loud music blaring out into the night and I came over all funny and rushed up the stairs and barged inside, because I thought that Anna must be crying and Ric must have just turned up the music so he couldn't hear it and then got on with his life. Shame, shame, shame! Of course, my brother would never do something like that. Turns out that while they were cooking dinner and watching the Sports channel, Anna was boogie woogie-ing to the song rifts in between each segment, so when it was finally bed time Ric had an inspirational flash, whacked a CD in the player and let it rip. Apparently, it went down extremely well. She was not a fan of Nirvana but she loved the Beastie Boys, which blows all that womb-recognition stuff out of the water. If that was the case, she'd be drifting off to Paul Kelly and The Indigo Girls and Ben Harper and Beth Orton, not some crap misogynistic soft rock bad boy band.

Oh joy, now I can't wait until she's a teen.

It's me again

2006-07-13T11:48:00.000+08:00

I'm back! The whining bitchy old bag of agro has been wrestled back into her little corner of my soul and now the more or less sweet Helen, more or less bereft of mucus and more or less tanked up on sleep, has returned to the control centre.

'Hello!' as Anna would almost say and that is the news of the day, that I think her first word might soon be 'hello'. She's certainly saying something pretty similar now, a sort of Eh-Oh! and there's a definite inflection on the end to indicate an exclamation mark. It's pretty exciting. I have been musing on a (ridiculous) made-up hypothesis that a first word might be indicative of a future career, in which case I thought 'hello!' might be paving the way to interesting and challenging work within the Immigration Department. But then I realised that there would have to be a complete change of government for that to ring true, because to be eligible for employment in the Howard Government's Immigration Department, Anna's first words would have to be 'Let Me Judge You Before I Decide On A Welcome (Or Not).' From what I can tell, John Howard uses the 'Three W' test to decide who gets to live in this huge, population not terribly big, supposedly multicultural nation of ours: White, Wealthy, Westerners. If you don't fit the bill, bugger off and go elsewhere… no, we don't care where, we don't even care if there is no other where, just don't stop here. Maybe … and here I am floating off into a lovely fantasy … maybe by the time Anna is old enough to vote and start forging a career, we will have a Green party in power and the policies relating to other human beings might become humane again.

My first word, apparently, was 'Bird', and so this might explain why I myself have no career to speak of – I am flighty and easily distracted by bright shiny things, and put all my energies into flimsy nest building and larking about in the sunshine.

Blergh!

2006-07-11T12:34:00.000+08:00

This sucks! Anna has a cold and I have a cold and we both feel wretched and miserable and, on my part anyway, fairly damn angry. Because this is just dumb! (Because I don't 'do' sick well, and never have). Neither of us are getting much sleep, and I love my sleep; Anna because she can't breath (poor lovey) and me because then she wakes up and won't/can't go back to sleep and screams and yells every time she is horizontal, and meanwhile I am just about dropping where I stand, and this is happening every three hours. It's ridiculous. Where is the 'off' button on these things? Why are my instruction books so damn useless? Just what was wrong with my life anyway when it was hollow and meaningless and childless but had a good 8 hours every night? Why did I give up the kind of life where I had the luxury of ringing in sick and spending A WHOLE DAY in bed? Why didn't I do this more often, in preparation for now when I am not going to be able to do it for the next 15 years or so? Why didn't someone remind me? What sort of stupid universal rule is it that if you don't get enough sleep at night, you still have to carry on as normal during the day? How is a person supposed to carry on, with a smile, when she has snot wiped all over her, has Farex sneezed right in her face at high velocity, is thrown up all over, has tits that suddenly start leaking again, and has smoothed over two hissy fits, all before 9am? Where's the bloody angel to come and smooth over my hissy fits? Why did I ever, ever, think that I could do this parenting thing on my own? Why can't I make my child feel better? Where are the know-it-all health professionals when she is crying and snuffling at 3am? Why don't I make a recording of it and play it back to them at full volume when they tell me she's not heavy enough/doesn't nap long enough/should be eating more solids? Why can scientists and doctors and other clever people sort you out with cures for polio and hepatitis and even stick on a new leg if you lose your original one but can't figure out how to cure a cold? These people call themselves intelligent - how hard can it be anyway? How much time do they need to figure it out? Why doesn't bloody God, who I don't believe in anyway but if he really wanted me to believe he could make himself bloody useful, why doesn't he send someone around to make Anna feel better and to let me have some bloody sleep????????

Great Pink Plastic Stuff Hunter

2006-07-07T11:52:00.000+08:00

Anna and I have survived our first no deposit! Lay-by now for Christmas! Post financial year! Big toy sale! All the major retailers have them in July sometime and K-Mart's started yesterday. I was there with stars in my eyes and gladness in my heart: this – this decadent frenzy of moveable, clickable, wheel-able, bounce-able, pop-out-able things, with attachments – is one of the reasons why I had a child.

It was mad. There was crap and kids and chaos everywhere, no-one followed any social rules or recognisable order, no-one minded, the heating was on way too high, and everyone was functioning perfectly well in spite of it all. There were even blackboards set up to advertise coffee and snacks within sight of the poor souls wasting away in the lay-by queue. It was like the excitement of a fairground except slowed way, way, way, waaaaaaayy down. And roller coaster trolleys don't have wonky wheels.

I don't know what I bought. As soon as I stepped foot in the melee, I realised that whatever I thought ~~I might like~~ Anna might like I should throw in the trolley then and there, as my chances of getting back to wherever I had last seen things was going to be roughly nil. So I was flinging things in and flinging them straight back out again when I came across a better thing; I think the contents of my trolley changed completely at least three times. It appeared everyone else was doing the exact same, so the shelves were a glorious shamble of stuff. In fact, it looked just like it might if a few kids had the run of the place for their personal toy room. The staff were going quietly bonkers trying to keep some sort of semblance of order – today was only the first day, so good luck guys! Reminded me somewhat of Sisyphus pushing his boulder up the hill in Hades for all eternity – but I thought it was great fun.

Anna had a bit of a dummy spit in the middle of the 4 km long lay-by queue, which only added to the atmosphere of the day.

Being the total shopping legend that I am, I did find the one thing I was planning to get: one of those plastic clam-shell jobbies that you can fill up with water or sand (or both, I guess, if you are feeling particularly mad or in a mood to clean something) because it has not escaped my attention that Anna's favourite thing to do these days is stuff her face full of the dirt that collects in the cracks of the pavers at the back of our house. So I thought, a ha, the child needs a sand pit; if she's going to eat dirt at least I can ensure that it is clean dirt that I can keep some control of. Because I am nothing if not a considerate mother.

I also distinctly remember keeping hold of a really funky plastic penguin that you blow up until it is roughly toddler size and it has a weight in the bottom so that when you push it over, it will bounce right back and hit you in the nose. It is supposed to help teach almost-toddlers how to walk. I can't see how that would happen, being as it is something that moves every time they try to use it for support and then springs back again to whack them when they let go. Maybe they are so eager to get away from it, their 'run away' reflex kick-starts their leg co-ordination. Whatever: the important thing is, I can't wait to play with it.

On so many levels, I counted the day as a success. So much so that these purchases (whatever they are) have already been deemed as 'birthday', next week I'm off to Big W for 'Christmas', and then if I allow myself to get completely carried away I might even do Target after that. Then I need to stop and take a breath, as I don't want to suffer from Christmas burn-out in July. And all these things will need paying for at some stage. And I remember babbling on, pre-birth, like the idiot I am, about how Anna would not be getting loads of presents at Christmas time from me or anyone else because that was just rampant capitalism and totally unnecessary and in deference to all the homeless and needy children of the world, one present from me and one from Santa would be just fine and she could damn well be thankful for that. Now I will need to channel all my energy into thinking up a functional yet graceful about-face on the matter, and exhausting myself on way-too-early shopping trips is not conducive to back flippery.

Ode to Telemarketers

2006-07-06T14:19:00.000+08:00

Oh, Telemarketers, how much do I hate you?
Let me count the ways
As I try to negotiate
Your conversation littered with
Open ended questions and
Your conviction that you are doing me
A favour

As you try to politely flog me a
New phone complete with
Camera and accessories
At no charge to me
Oh except for the 48 month contract for which I will end up paying thousands
I wonder if you realise how hard I am trying not to lose
My temper

How many times will you read your
Pile of drivel passing for a script
Before you'll realise that the 14 day holiday for two
At a hotel of my choice
Complete with restaurant vouchers and a fruit basket
Is not in any economically recognisable way
Totally free

Oh, Telemarketers, how much do I hate you?
Thank you for speaking with me
Let me take a few moments of your time
To tell you that if you wake
My napping baby one more time
With your unsolicited phone calls I will have to get
Very angry

Dedwydd pen-blwydd

2006-07-02T09:59:00.000+08:00

Hurrah for Mother's Groups

2006-06-30T17:27:00.000+08:00

Anna has been a bit stroppy this week and consequently a bit hard to be around. Actually, she's been great to be around as long as I am around very close to her (i.e., skin to skin contact at best, or within reach-out-and-touch distance if not) but if I get up and move, say to go to the toilet or cook something or just do any other very small non-baby thing to enhance my sanity, it doesn't go down very well at all. Worst of all, her bedtime routine has all gone to shit and she's suddenly not a happy camper if I put her down at her usual 7pm. Because I am ~~weak and lily livered~~ pragmatic and sensible, rather than fight her I just get her up again. She's delighted with this new strategy and she plays on her rug with her toys until 8.30 or 9.00 or so, then she has another feed and goes to bed with no complaints, just like the angel that I know she can pretend to be.

Just to get my own back and to remind myself that I am the adult and therefore hold the balance of power (Ha!!! ha ha ha HA HA! Cackles like an especially excited banshee) I have implemented a new 'we still get up at 7 o'clock even if we go to bed late, darling' rule. Well, I figured it worked on my brother and me, when I was 10 and my mother finally waved the white flag on the Great Bedtime War, and I don't see any harm in starting early. (HA HA! Does the banshee thing again). Unless harm can be categorized as my profound shock at seeing my smiling little cherub's 'first thing in the morning and happy to see you' face replaced by a snarling troll; in which case, yes, there is some psychological harm, certainly enough to make me dread the cold winter mornings on school days lurking on my horizon (if I start lobbying now, maybe I could convince the Education Department to start classes at 10 am by the time Anna starts school). However, out of stubbornness and a strong conviction that I am right – I don't get these very often, so I have to make the most of them when they arrive – every morning I gird my heart and continue to fling the door open as if I really want to be there, I cry 'good morning, my precious' as I scoop up my little troll, and I draw the blind with a gay flourish and sing the 'good morning sunshine' song to the bright, happy and unsuspecting world as if oblivious to the fact that the creature in my arms is rusting the hinges off next door's gates with her scowl.

And no, the times above are not typo's or wild fantasies; in the past Anna has slept from about 7pm until about 7am with, lately, a 10 minute breastfeed in the wee small hours; and yes I am aware that this is not at all usual for a baby and that most other mothers hate me with a sleep-deprived mania. Don't tell me I have had it lucky up to now and should shut the fuck up complaining, because I don't want to hear it. I have a right to stamp my foot and shake my fist at the universe and demand a continuation of baby-sleep perfection. And don't tell me that if Anna is going to get up at 7am I should cut her a bit of slack in the evenings and let her stay up till 8.30 or 9pm because I don't want to hear that either. I like my evenings to myself to watch crap TV and write my blog, and eating is always fun too. And don't even mention the idea that if I insist on a 7pm bedtime I should expect a 5.30am start to compensate, because Anna might sneak a look on this blog one day and get ideas. It will be bad enough having to explain why Mum can say 'fuck' but she can't, let alone trying to do it at the ungodly hour of 5.30am.

Just for the record, if there are any gung-ho but insane executives and/or ladder climbers out there: 5.30 in the morning is not get up time; it is roll over and snuggle in time. So stop doing it because you are setting a bad precedent for everyone else.

Anyway, hurrah for Mother's Groups! Mine is kind of tedious and depressing in many different ways but yesterday, oh joy! I discovered that almost all the other babies are also going through a clingy possessive stage, and all of them have started to rebel against their usual night time habits. (One babe has reverted to real little babyhood and started to wake every two hours again, which I think is a good enough reason to take her back as a faulty item and insist on a refund. You'd never guess the fault by looking at the baby: she's bright eyed and bushy tailed. It's her mum who's the giveaway: she looks like a badly drawn heroin chick in need of a long, deep, warm fix). I have never felt so glad to hear the miseries of other people. To know that however grumpy Anna and I get with each other these days, there are other people out there who have it so much worse, cheers me up so much I think I might just pile a whole lot of toys in Anna's cot with her and let her party on all night.

Swoon

2006-06-25T22:15:00.000+08:00

Oh my. Oh my oh my ohmyohmyohmyohmy…… I am in the middle of a breathless swooning moment because I have had lots of emails from my friends and family telling me wonderful things about my writing and how good they think my blog is, and some of them are fabulously intelligent people who themselves write very well indeed, and I even have another comment from yet another complete stranger asking me when my book is out… well, suffice to say I'm all aflutter.

I had to go online to pay some bills, just to bring myself back to reality for a bit.

In other Anna news, my brother Ric and I and a friend of mine went to see Heads We're Dancing last night and what a great gig it was. (They are off next month to hit the big time at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and just hearing those words was enough to spin me off into a reverie about summertime in Edinburgh and walking about in the shadow of the Castle soaking up all the atmosphere of the Festival and maxing my credit card going to see all sorts of wonderful and funny and literary and downright arty farty acts… mmmmmm, it was nice). Ric and I tore up the dance floor – we can be a pretty mean duo when we feel the rhythm. I think it comes of neither of us actually giving a shit what anybody thinks we look like. Ric was his usual gregarious self – by the end of the night he'd made friends with everyone on the dance floor and spent a great deal of time shaking hands and backslapping and introducing me to all of his new mates.

Anna stayed with Grandma for the second successful time but this time, did she sleep soundly all night long? Oh no, she did not. Apparently she woke up at 9 o'clock and refused to go back to sleep, so she and Grandma stayed up watching TV and eating chocolate. Hmmmm. I got home to find them snuggled up together in a purple velvet bathrobe, surrounded by abandoned toys and with chocolate foil strewn about the place. They had saved me some, which was nice of them.

All change

2006-06-23T12:44:00.000+08:00

I'm all out of sorts because Anna is changing her routine again – I think. It always takes me by surprise despite the many times it's happened before; I spend a couple of days wondering why she suddenly doesn't want to do whatever she's been happily doing, and then the penny drops and I realise that the times, they are a'changing.

This most recent one is regarding my old nemesis, nap time. For the past couple of months (or weeks, or maybe days – I don't know, time has no meaning for me anymore) she's had a nice and easy routine of a two hour nap starting at 10.30 or so, going until lunch time (very handy) and then topping it up with an hour in the afternoon. This has been brilliant for me as I get a whole two hours to do whatever I want with (and you can bet it ain't been the housework!) but still had the afternoons free for visiting or shopping or escaping the dust bunnies in the corners. Now, she's not happy to nap until about noon and I'm all confused. I rushed off to consult my baby books and yes, apparently this happens somewhere around 12 months (terribly advanced and gifted is my daughter, you know) but there are no hints about what to do about the food issue if she's sleeping slap bang in the middle of lunch time, so again I'll be making it up as I go along. I have a million things to consider: do I give her a very early lunch, but run the risk of her being too tired and cranky to eat it? Do I leave it and give her a late lunch, knowing this will surely interfere with the afternoon snack? How do I work the breastfeeding around this given that her morning and afternoon tea have previously been a breast feed? Is now when I start to try get her to sleep without a red hot go at boobies? How can I put this off for longer, as the thought of all the crying and unhappiness is too hideous to contemplate right now? How do I work my lunch around it all – I will starve to death if I have to wait until 2pm or later to eat, but who ever heard of sitting down to lunch at 11.30? That would mean preparing it at 11-ish and I've only just come out of morning tea by then. Who wants to prepare a lunch with a belly full of cake or biscuits? (Oops, sorry, of course I really mean fresh fruit or yoghurt). If I eat on my own how does that gel with encouraging Anna to eat with the family and learn about social mealtimes, and the proper way to hold a fork, and how as fun as it no doubt is, dropping food over the edge is really not the done thing?

What is the bloody meaning of life, anyway?

I think now might be a good time to take a chill pill, relax and go with the flow. Despite all my crowing, Anna is really not having much truck with the solid finger foods anyway and I honestly don’t think she notices if I happen to be eating when she is. I suspect the socialising at the dinner table concept is something that sounds fabulous in theory but doesn't translate very well into reality. Not for an 8 month old, anyway. I am so determined not to make food an issue between us – I can see terrible two's* tableside temper tanties looming on my horizon otherwise, and I just can't be bothered with all that – so I need to be a bit Zen and let go.

Right then, I'm off to have my lunch.

* Although what I've heard from the gossip of my baby club networks is that two year olds are actually still pretty nice people – it's when they hit three that the gremlins take over. Three is the new two!

Underwater

2006-06-22T22:11:00.000+08:00

Wednesdays are our swimming days and I think they are my favourite day of the week. Anna has been swimming since she was 13 weeks old and I really recommend it to any new parent. We swim with Oceanic Waterbabies who have a great philosophy about babies and swimming and have a very gentle instructing method (good for someone like moi, i.e. a big fat scaredy cat in the water) but I think that anywhere you go where you and your babe feel comfortable and have fun is OK.

Yesterday we parents donned goggles so we could go underwater with our babies and spy on them. Anna looks great, albeit kinda spooky – babies have this mechanism thingy where their air passage closes automatically in water (so they don't drown in amniotic fluid, presumably) which means they don't need to keep their mouth shut, and their eyes have a special film across them to keep water out so they don't need to keep them shut either; all this means that while we are holding breaths and puffing cheeks out and looking like land lubbers, babies underwater cruise around looking pretty much the same as they do above water. It's cute but freaky.

Our instructor, Elvira, says to be 'right there' with the babies so as to maintain eye contact but although I follow this advice dutifully – don't want my little precious bundle to think I've left her in the deep end and have issues for the rest of her life – Anna really doesn't notice because she very rarely looks at me. She's too busy checking everyone else out, and keeping an eye on the floaty toys we use for some of the activities. Thankfully, unlike her completely useless mother who still can't dive – I'll be honest here, I still can't even keep my head under the bloody shower for more than a minute or two without getting panic flushes – Anna seems to have the water thing sorted. This is exactly what I was aiming for – I know for a fact that growing up in Australia, surrounded by some of the best beaches in the world, is a total bummer if one is psychically allergic to water.

In fact I think I might be in danger of raising a geek, because we have become the teacher's pet. We do everything to the letter. I listen to every single instruction because I irrationally believe if I miss anything, it will probably be an integral cornerstone of the whole experience, and Anna will drown without it. I am also fully aware that I get anxious in the water, so I deliberately leave all my personal judgements poolside and trust completely and absolutely what Elvira is telling us to do. It's the closest thing to a spiritual relationship I've ever had. If she says totally submerse Anna and let go, I ignore my Inner Hydrophone, go with the higher power and do it. Consequently, Anna is now going deeper for longer than the other babies who have mothers who have retained their protective maternal instincts (and to my surprise and great relief, she has not drowned even once). Even I am starting to get a bit tired of hearing Elvira telling me how well Anna is doing.

I'm pretty sure I heard all the other babies whispering about how they were going to get us in the parking lot after class.

Hello world

2006-06-19T13:04:00.000+08:00

Firstly I think we need a drum roll because I've had my first commenter! Kirsten from Florida takes out that honour and thanks for saying such nice things. I couldn't have asked for any better even from my mum (who incidentally is the 2nd person to leave a comment.)

My blog really only went 'live' (or whatever the geeks call it) over the weekend. I have been writing blog posts since January when I had a totally dumb, stupid, and not user friendly blog that I won in a competition. I ditched that site after one too many frustrating contacts from their 'help desk' team (that phrase used very, very loosely) who were no doubt very knowledgeable but as they were all off-shore workers – getting paid about 3 peanuts per day, probably – their English and general communication skills could variously be described as 'patchy', 'laughable' and 'bloody awful'. In other words, no help at all. So although this particular company was Australian (technically, despite their offloading all the work onto poorer countries) and I do like to support a good Aussie, just to, you know, balance out the global juggernaut that is the USA; in this case it didn't work so I bailed both on the Aussies and on my principals. Ha! It's one of my strengths, I think: I'm good and flexible that way. Now I am with the Google powerhouse and it's fun and user friendly for a non-geek such as myself and I think I'm gonna like it.

If there are any Americans reading my blog (apart from Kirsten) who might take offence at the above paragraph, please don't; I don't mean to dis your very fine country and it's not your fault that George Dubya was ever born (good grief, look at the smarmy amphibian we've voted in: I'm hardly in a position to chuck stones!) but it's just that lately I (and several thousand others) have tended to notice just a teensy bit of cultural creepage happening from that part of the world that is sandwiched between Canada and South America. I accept that this is partly the fault of the people (i.e., me et al) who have thus far tended to more or less enthusiastically embrace everything American with nary a second thought. My gentle chiding of America, and my attempts to circumnavigate its dominance by using Australian where practical and possible, are merely a small and probably token effort to stem the tide of this creepage, and should in no way be construed as any criticism against individual people who live in America. (Except, of course, George Bush (both of 'em, in fact) who I'm sorry but I just can't bring myself to like, and also I’m not really fond of Julia Roberts either).

Whew. Where did that come from? I'm obviously feeling all apologetic and sensitive today. I could revert back to my usual blunt but loveable self: if anyone doesn't like reading this, then don't. Turn off the whole damn computer and go for a brisk walk instead, it'll do you a power of good.

Now. Back to the business of Anna. She has food issues already. (Actually, she's fine with food; I think it's definitely me that has the issues). The majority of my issues come from me lovingly cooking and mashing a whole lot of vegetables and then slowly but surely throwing them all away, in little teaspoon full increments. Anna will eat two or three mouthfuls, with a fairish bit of encouragement that I’m getting tired of doing already (I know, I have no staying power) and then I throw the rest out. It's discouraging. Especially given that she quite likes the shop bought muck-based baby food which all taste the same – cardboardish – and don't make me feel like a good and nurturing mum. And then even though I know that comparing babies is a sure fire slippery slope to parental gloom and despondency, even though I know this I do it anyway and I can't help but note that all the other babies at Mother's Group are happily scoffing their baby food by the bucket load and clamouring for more. One baby was even sampling the biscuits and dip! (and, tsk tsk, the potato chips and the choc chip bikkies but I won't say anything more because I remember that I am feeling sensitive and non-judgemental today. Apparently.)

Anyway, I thought, I'm over the baby mush, Anna is obviously over it too (she does like to chew the bowl and the spoon, which is encouraging) so yesterday she had finger food for the first time – tuna, egg yolk and some bread crusts. What a success! As long as you don't count her actually eating the food as the marker of success (in which case it was a bit of a failure because I'm pretty sure that not much actually went down her throat). But it was fun, and lots of the food went into her mouth which is fairly close to her stomach – the fact that it came back out again is a mere technicality – and I also managed to sneak in a few mouthfuls of mush while she was preoccupied. So now I am embracing the concept of true 'together' meals and am busily menu planning and getting excited about tinned spaghetti and vegemite toast and two minute noodles in ways that are probably all out of proportion, if not downright unhealthy.

It's only one small step until I buy an overpriced 'cooking for your toddler' cookbook written by some celebrity chef who is either childless or has employed a nanny since day one, and then – oh! And then! – then I will be throwing away artfully served and cleverly garnished food by the plateful instead.

Strong female role model wanted

2006-06-09T12:33:00.000+08:00

So I'm at the doctor's with Anna yesterday morning and it has led me to pondering the nature of female behaviour and strong female role models and what impression I want to give Anna as she is growing up. (Don't ask me why I was at the doctor's – it is related to another bad incident that happened not too long ago and I am too ashamed to admit it happened again so I am denying everything).

My GP is great and he has restored nearly all my faith in male doctors (my having got annoyed with them in my early twenties and insisting on female GP's ever since). This one – I am reluctant to mention his name because I am not au fait with blog etiquette yet and don't know if I am supposed to – is an obstetrician as well as a GP and I got him by default as there were no female obstetricians around when I needed one. Anyway… despite his being all round lovely and caring and a genuine Nice Guy, every time I am around him I go all pathetic and girly and whiny and helpless. AND I HATE IT. I hear the stuff coming out of my mouth – "I hope I'm doing all right but it's really hard and I don't know if I should be doing this on my own and I think I'm doing OK but I guess I'll know when she's 15 and crawling out bedroom windows hee hee and please Leon (ooops) please send a dashing knight on a white horse to gallop up and save me because I'm just a poor wee damsel and I need saving." I hear it coming out of my mouth and I'm thinking, where is this crap coming from? Because I know it is not true – I know I'm doing a good job at mothering and I don't think I did the wrong thing being on my own and if a dashing knight did ride up on a horse I'd invite him in for coffee, but if he tried to pull any saving crap I'd send him on his way quick smart (I'd keep the horse).

It's horrifying and pathetic. It's also bad enough that I am doing it at all but even worse when I consider that Anna is RIGHT THERE listening and OK, she's only 8 months now so who cares what she hears as she doesn't understand it anyway, but if I don't sort out my shit now she'll be understanding it soon enough and I don't want her having a pathetic female role model. I want her to be strong and independent and self assured and not have to rely on giggling to get what she thinks she needs.

OK, I'll tell you why I was at the surgery in the first place – Anna fell out of her pram and grazed her little head. She cried for a bit and then went all tired and floppy and naturally, I freaked out, so I took her to Accident and Emergency where they pronounced her fine and dandy. But because Dr Leon (it's out now, no point hiding it) is her GP they faxed him about it and he got one of his frightening medical receptionist underlings to ring me to go see him so he could check her out. (See, he's nice like that – caring. Some people would find this an imposition and an invasion of privacy, I guess, but I think it shows that he gives a shit which in my experience is a rarity with overworked and underpaid publicly funded doctors).

This Pram Incident was more frightening for me than the Change Table Incident because with the pram, I was aware of the dangers and thought I'd got them covered. So it's not that I was being just a tad negligent, (bad enough), it's that I had a downright bad judgement call (worse). I think it's because my brain is still not the full quid at the moment, whether due to chronic tiredness or breast feeding or too much spider solitaire, I don't know. I do know it's a fact and I realised this because of the Penguin Incident this morning:

Anna, Bud and I were on the home stretch of our daily walk and coming up my street, only about 6 houses away from our house, I saw this black and white thing in a vaguely familiar position sitting on the pavement and my poor tired old brain says, perfectly seriously without a hint of a joke, Oh look, it's a penguin.

A penguin.

Now, it's true that our suburb is chocka block full of native flora and fauna but thus far, sadly, no penguins live around here. (This is damn shame in my opinion; I think the world could do with a few more penguins hanging about street corners and under letterboxes and bushes). Merest seconds after my brain gave me the penguin hypothesis, the rest of my brain – the bit that works – said don't be an idiot, it's not a penguin, it's just a normal boring cat*. And yet another bit – the bit that has actually already jumped ship, it just checks back every now and then to reassure itself that it made the right decision – this bit thought, what a bloody shambles.

*This bit was correct.

You've got to be kidding

2006-06-04T12:22:00.000+08:00

Oh my lordy, this bunch of seriously dysfunctional baby names is hilarious. I'm warning you, make sure the baby's door is closed if she's asleep, cos there are some serious laugh out loud moments in this lot. A couple of 'em literally brought tears to my eyes. This site is better than Prozac.

I found this site courtesy of a little pregnant- I don't believe in God either, but if I did I'd be praying for a baby for you.

Whatever

2006-06-03T21:26:00.000+08:00

I haven't updated anything for a while because I have been feeling generally BLAAAH. Oh, I suppose a few exciting things have happened – I bought a highchair, and in my universe, that's pretty high on the list of excitement – and I've had a fairly social week, but in between times when the door is shut in the face of the world and it's just me and my dependants, I've been grumping at Buddy and watching crap TV (is it just me, or is Super Nanny getting a teensy bit repetitive?) and playing Spider Solitaire.

Here are some other things that happened.

1. Anna started to turn pages of her board books on her own! And I'm pretty sure she is 'following' the story, or at least anticipating the giggly bits, or maybe she's just laughing at the book itself; I don’t know and I don't care – I just am so pleased that she's shaping up to be a little bookish person. When I found out I was pregnant my biggest fear, over and above her not being 1. A girl, 2. 100% healthy, and 3. A One Nation voter, was that she wouldn't be a reader. My God, I thought, what would we talk about? Where in the world would our common ground be? Given that my only interests and skills in the world are reading and writing (judge for yourselves on the latter), there was a fairly narrow scope for any meaningful connection.

2. Anna has her first crush – on a big felt wall hanging of Winnie the Pooh with a bunch of balloons. It's hilarious – she gets a great big smile every time we go into her room, and she giggles JUST LIKE the schoolgirl she will be someday be, and she gets all shy and hides her face but then she can't help herself and she peeks out, just to make sure he's still there, and then she giggles all over again. She's been doing it for days and I am still entranced.

3. Buddy has disgraced himself big time – I have discovered that he has been sneaking into next door's back garden, stirring up the big dogs over the back of their fence, and eating their cat's food. (It's better than eating the cat, I suppose…) Anyway he has now been confined to our own back garden, which is a bit devastating for him and a pain in the arse for me because I have to keep remembering to close the gates. Up until now he's been the sort of dog that hasn't needed fences as he'd just hang about the front garden on those few times when he'd shift himself off the couch to go outside. Terribly illegal of course but I've always joyfully flaunted that particular council regulation, smug in the knowledge that MY dog is well trained and MY dog doesn't go wandering and MY dog is cool enough not to cause disturbances. Damn.

4. A while ago I totally took leave of all my senses and entered Anna in a 'beautiful baby' contest run by Mother and Baby magazine; and in a blatant case of appalling judgement she hasn't made the finalists list. Bummer, because I was hoping we'd get the free trip to Sydney and from there we could fly cheaply to Melbourne to visit friends. I know that sounds like sour grapes but really and truly, it is why I entered … yet I have to admit there was a tiny and incredulous part of me that wanted to see her face beaming out at the world from a magazine cover. Really ridiculous. Probably her not winning is for the best, as I'd no doubt turn into a nightmarish boring competitive bitch of a stage mother and Anna would spend her whole life trying to get away from me.

5. I was right on the growth charts! Those bloody percentile graphs that a certain health nurse whose name I shan't mention for fear of legal repercussions made me feel bad about because Anna was down the bottom of; well, according to the World Health Organisation, the data used to calculate the 'average' and acceptable weight gain is based on a study of American bottle fed babies done 20 years ago. Arrrgghhhh! I have nothing personally against either American babies or bottle fed babies or babies born in the 80's, but I would like to point out that they have NOTHING AT ALL TO DO WITH MY NEW AUSTRALIAN BREASTFED BABY and so why oh why our bloody health system has been pushing these charts on us is beyond me. This sort of thing really, really pisses me off. Why? Well, for starters, I went through a lot of stress and my confidence as a mother was really knocked about due to Anna being at the bottom of these charts, and to find out it was unnecessary is pretty annoying. One of the mums in my mother's group actually stopped breastfeeding and took up bottle feeding because she felt bad that her baby was at the bottom end of the scale. That's not just annoying, it's a tragedy.

If anyone is interested, click here for WHO's girl weight-for-age growth charts and here for boys.

Toilet stop

2006-05-27T16:47:00.000+08:00

Ha ha ha! Given my current obsession with all things ablutin', I think this site is worth a mention: a toilet map! I'm surprised no-one's thought to include it in that naughty If You Don't Know Where the Bloody Hell You Are, You're a Bloody Idiot tourism campaign that has the Brits all in a lather. (OK – I doctored the words just a teensy bit).

Well done Australian Government! Whoever thought of this idea, give them a large non-taxable bonus. Also, who goes to check the toilets? Who is the lucky bastard who gets to write 'roving facility inspector' on the blank space where occupation goes? I want that job! (No, no, I'm completely serious – I do want that job – yeah, there'd be a few shockers and you'd want a gas mask and a good sturdy pair of rubber boots, but think of the benefits: not being chained to a desk, the travel allowance, the rare graffiti gems, finding large bags of non-traceable drug money left in rubbish bins…)

Further poo tales

2006-05-26T15:05:00.000+08:00

Sorry to keep banging on about this subject but I am in the middle of a fascinating yet putrid learning curve.

Here's my discovery of the day: when babies eat pureed kiwi fruit, THE BLACK SEEDS COME OUT EXACTLY THE SAME AS WHEN THEY WENT IN. I am sharing this with the world as a bit of public service so that innocent new parents don't freak out – like I did – when they open a nappy and find little bitty black things everywhere.

Ante natal classes should be restructured so that people can be prepared for this sort of thing. I don't know what they do teach in ante natal classes – I went to them once a week for 10 weeks, and I forgot everything the minute the first contraction came along – but we obviously need much more relevant information.

I learnt three things from my ante natal classes:

1. Our warm and cuddly midwife was replaced in week 3 by Ms Thin and Bony who was very abrupt and frightened everybody with statements like "It doesn't matter what pain relief you use, it's going to hurt." I'll bet everyone was hoping, just like me, that they didn't get her. But then when the time comes you realise that one abrupt no-nonsense carer is worth more than an army of soft hearted hippy mother types, because they are wonderfully firm when you are insisting that you can't do it anymore and they prevent you from giving up completely.

2. One midwife awkwardly manoeuvring a little plastic baby through a little plastic cervix IS IN NO WAY representational of what happens in real life with your real big baby and real bruised cervix.

3. When you turn up to ante natal classes with your brother, everyone stares at you and no-one really gets used to it.

Update on my nails

2006-05-22T21:27:00.000+08:00

I think this will be the most fascinating post I will ever write.

Just in case anyone cares or is interested, my fingernails have finally recovered from the weird damage inflicted on them during Anna's birth. They are the last bits of my body to do so, after 7½ months, so they've been holding out for a while. I'm perversely proud of them.

I think it's obvious that I am tired and should really be in bed, NOT inflicting myself on the world.

First cold

2006-05-21T20:54:00.000+08:00

Oh no! Gorgeous baby has her first runny snotty nose and I have turned into a tissue-wielding mama. I had no idea how tricky it is to wipe the nose of someone who is unable to blow. Or, for that matter, how quickly those oh-so-cute whole-body cuddles of babies turn decidedly un-cute when snot is involved. Actually, and I had no idea I would ever say this, I find that when it comes down to it I would still rather have the snot than not have a cuddle.

Apologies if anyone is trying to eat right now. Welcome to my world.

Single people are people too

2006-05-18T20:54:00.000+08:00

Can I just send out a timely little message now to all those 'smug couples' (quoting Bridget Jones, how low is my life going to get?!) out there in happy couple land that just because a single woman comes into your orbit, it does not mean that you are about to lose your husband to the great gaping jaws of infidelity. Grrrr!!!

In fact, as much as it shames me to say this, letting down the great global sisterhood and all, it seems to be other bloked-up women who unsheath their claws at me – blokes don't actually seem to give a shit where I sit in the relationship graph.

So girls, give me and all the other single gals a break. We are not all after your significant others. Most of us hate sharing as much as you do. There really is no need to make snarly comments along the lines of 'watch out! Keep your eye on [insert name of poor gal just trying to get through the day unscathed]' as comments such as these serve only two purposes: to make an uncomfortable moment, and to highlight your own glaring insecurities.

So stop it. It's not big and it's not clever.

Tucker and Brad

2006-05-18T12:42:00.000+08:00

Lordy Lordy, this is so funny.

I have no idea who Tucker and Brad are, but boy am I glad I'm not their mother. I bet they're sending the photo C/- her happy little zone in the nut house.

However, I'd love to be their sister. A lifetime of manipulative fun…

Cause and Effect #1

2006-05-17T19:44:00.000+08:00

Today's lesson is: when solids go in, solids come out.

Sorry to bring this up in the middle of whatever you are doing, but Anna has just had the most revolting poo I have yet seen her do. It was indescribably vile. It was also right after lunch, which I will never, ever do again. Change a nappy straight after lunch, I mean; I was considering never ever changing a nappy again, but a bit of time spent imagining the consequences of that was a bit frightening.

It was by far the most horrendous thing I have ever seen in my life, and I have not led a cloistered life: I have, for instance, spent 4 days in Munich awash with beer and vomit and overflowing toilets at the annual slop-a-thon known as Oktoberfest.

I am thinking this sort of Badlands Nappy thing will only get worse as time goes by and more solids go in. I have therefore decided to keep Anna on breast milk forever, or at least until she is old enough to wipe her own bum, because otherwise I don't think I will survive.

First Mother's Day

2006-05-14T20:05:00.000+08:00

Of course, before Anna, my family and I didn't celebrate Mother's (or Father's) Day because everyone knows that it is a construct of evil capitalism, designed to callously cash in on parental guilt and insecurities, and give the florists something to look forward to after the peak of Valentine's Day.

Now that I've had Anna, suddenly it seems like a sweet and loving thing to celebrate, and it's totally appropriate to respect the powerful and awesome role that mother's play all over the world.

My sister, who at last count has four children, must be feeling a tad confused because for some reason her kids have never engendered the need for a Mother's get together of the sort our family had yesterday. Maybe Anna's arrival has triggered a critical mass of squirming kiddies who justify a celebration. Maybe it was just a vague coincidence of timing and plans and good fortune. Maybe everyone felt the same way as me, and just needed any old excuse to get away from the madness of our four walls and descend on someone else's life for a while.

Whatever. We had a 'do', it was fun, we had nice food and good wine (Dad obviously felt it was a festive occasion as he broke out a couple of bottles, forgoing the Château de Cardboard!) and all kids were charming and well behaved. (This being the critical factor in any get together). I was a teensy bit nervous as my mother and my father and step-mother have been estranged for a good long number of years now and are only just getting back into each other's orbits (again courtesy of Anna), but it was brilliant. Nothing like time to wash away the water under some brand new bridges (I love a good mixed metaphor!)

My Mother's Day present from Anna was a cease fire from the terribly vile mood she has been in for the past three days, and another sharp little tooth. Now 'we' have two teeth, arriving at the textbook time of 7 months, and I am one smug mama....

Robyn Barker is wrong

2006-05-12T21:46:00.000+08:00

Robyn Barker wrote the Baby Love books and damn fine things they are too. I found them very helpful and informative without being judgemental, which unfortunately is a rare find amongst baby gurus.

But one teensy area where she and I disagree is in the teething department. Today has been horrendous! My usually happy, cheerful, fun lovin' girl has turned into a whiny snarling beast who is satisfied with nothing. Anna (for it is she of whom I speak) doesn't want to do anything but doesn't want to do nothing; she doesn't want to be entertained, but she sure doesn't want to be on her own. She doesn't want to walk around and look at things, but she doesn't want to stand still for a cuddle. I even thought it might be a thrilling idea to just sit and wallow in self pity for a while, but she's not into that either. It's a shame, because that often works for me.

Robyn thinks that bad moods, diarrhoea, constant dribbling, extra vomiting, etc are mere coincidences and would happen anyway regardless of whether a tooth was coming. Sorry Robyn, I know you are better qualified in kids than me, but I think that's bollocks! I just can't believe there would be such a dramatic change in temperament and behaviour for no other reason than a 'bad day'

I am going to bed with fingers crossed hoping that tooth #2 erupts tonight, which will mean a return to sweet normality tomorrow.

Toys schmoys

2006-05-11T21:57:00.000+08:00

I joined our local council run toy library this week – what a fabulous idea! Bet it was a female councillor who thought up that one. I picked up a great action-packed bells and whistles activity thingy with lights and sound and movable bits, and a plastic ball because all the books say babies MUST HAVE BALLS to practice hand eye coordination, and to learn cause and affect (ball rolls away, mother runs around looking for it), and to encourage crawling, and generally to keep the world turning on its axis.

However, Anna finds the ball soooooooo boring (if she's anything like me, she'll find that growing up in sports-obsessed Australia can be a real drag sometimes. At least she won't have a little brother whose weekly soccer matches she will be forced to attend owing to it being illegal to leave her at home with a book where she'd prefer to be). She liked the telephone handset attachment on the bells and whistles jobby because she could smash it with gusto, until she smashed herself in the scone with it; then it suddenly became a tool of the devil, never to be touched.

The moral of this story is: don't spend a fortune buying toys 'cos they won't get your money's worth from them. Its been said a thousand times before how much kids prefer playing with the boxes, but apparently us parents need to hear it a thousand times again because we either keep spending a squillion bucks on plastic things made in sweatshops, or we feel bad that we are somehow depriving our children because we can't afford to spend a squillion bucks on plastic things made in sweatshops.

Here are some of Anna's favourite things to play with, in no particular order:

My purse
The dog's lead
The dog
A black plastic lid from the jar in which I keep cotton balls
My mobile phone
Me
Target and Big W catalogues that thoughtfully arrive in our mailbox every week
My glasses
A cardboard box that once had tea in it
The lemon tree

There is a lesson to be learnt here, I just wish I wasn't too tired to get it.

Mmmm..... baby food....

2006-05-09T20:21:00.000+08:00

Stealing food from a baby – how low can you go – but damnit, I did cook it! And I am still eating for two, ha ha.

Made up a batch of fruit compote today (in some households I think they call it 'pureed apple', but not here at Chateau Helen – hey, us housefrau's have gotta get our kicks where we can!) Just before lovingly spooning it into ice cube trays so it will be ready to lovingly feed to Anna, I just had a little taste. You know, just to test that it was up to an absolutely perfect standard for my little angel.

Well. I reckon I might have a few self control issues to work through. Guess what mummy had for dinner tonight? And guess who will be making more fruit compote tomorrow for the baby?

Somerville Ecovillage

2006-05-07T15:57:00.000+08:00

Desperate housing situation – ie, renting really does suck (tell me, what is so offensive about a few hooks on the walls? Does it really affect the stability of the world as we know it, or are Perth house owners just a teensy little bit too precious?), plus income on the very small side, plus no real deposit to speak of, equals bleak prospects of ever owning a patch of dirt with some bricks and mortar on it anytime soon.

It's time to think outside the square acreage. So along with a couple of friends of ours, Anna and I trundled up to Chidlow to check out the Somerville Eco Village and see how we might fit in with the communal living concept. It is something I have been thinking of for a while now but have been reluctant to pursue the communal housing operatives I know of due to there being only 15-20 houses – I like a bit more anonymity than that, even if I am going to be throwing myself in the deep end of community. At Somerville, there are plans to have 150 families. With figures like that, it will be fairly easy to avoid someone if they piss me off completely; it should also be equally possible to plan retribution on someone who finds me offensive without them ever finding out who covered their mud brick walls with (free range) eggs or who stole the wicker baskets from their bikes.

But I'm digressing; let's not get too cynical too early. And let me say, these guys and gals at Somerville sure do have their shit together. With all due respect to true hippies everywhere, I have been involved with a couple of other hippy enterprises and sometimes although the ideas are good, the action part of things is often lacking somewhat. Not so up at Somerville! They are a disparate, interesting, dedicated group of people who are all committed to the idea of sustainable communal living, and have got themselves organised in order to achieve the same. Very impressive.

However, unfortunately I could never live with them in their happy harmony heaven, because they have decided (via discussion and majority vote, naturally) to disallow pets. This seems ludicrous to me, especially given that they are going to have chooks, geese, goats, bees, house cows, etc. I know the site is in beautiful natural bushland but, c'mon guys, it's still almost metro area; just how many rare and endangered spotted bilbies do you think there will be living there, with the monstrous new 4-lane Northern Highway almost on your doorstep? Haven't you ever heard of cat runs? How about if someone wants a horse that will alleviate the need to buy a petrol run vehicle? Who decides what is 'pet' and what is 'organic farm machinery'? It's a bit rich to insist a dog can't live there because it might upset any passing native wildlife but then allow chickens (and their associated diseases) because, oh yeah, you can get the eggs… hypocritical is the first word that comes to mind. Here's a thought – how many of you have had chook pens before? Once the first vermin invasion has been overcome I bet you will be looking at a couple of good mousing moggies with entirely new eyes.

The 'no pet' policy also misses one of the most pertinent points about sustainable living: that every creature on the planet has a right to be alive, and they should not be judged and ranked purely on their use to human beings. Denying the children of Somerville the opportunity to grow up with the unconditional love of a dog or a cat or what have you, simply because they don't produce eggs or honey, is not something I'd want to subject Anna to.

Food....grrr

2006-05-03T12:04:00.000+08:00

Don't talk to me about baby food. I have all these grand plans of how I am going to avoid fussy eating and toddler/parent battles at the future dinner table, and I can't even get a nearly 7-month old to eat Farex. Or mashed banana, or pumpkin and sweetcorn, or pureed apple. Grandma can get her to eat. Grandad can get her to eat. Grandjan can get her to eat. I expect the council workers pruning the trees up and down our street could probably get her to enjoy a few good mouthfuls, too. Mum can't.

Bloody child.

However, I blame my breasts. I bet if they weren't there, she'd tuck right in.

Bad mother file

2006-05-01T22:18:00.000+08:00

This is where I will be brutally honest and record the less than perfect things I do as a mother, because I figure if I am going to tell the good I should tell the bad as well. No point trying to pretend that I am super mum 'cos it sure aint true.

Anna fell off her change table today and hit the ground. It was horrible. She landed like a sky diver, arms and legs akimbo and face first, and my heart just about smashed into a million pieces. I think about it now – hours later – and my heart still skips. I try not to think about it now but the image of her landing on the floor just half a foot away from me has burnt itself on my retina and I can't shake it.

I still don't know how she did it; she toppled off the end – not the side – away from her feet. She must have turned all the way around, and then been sort of half sitting up somehow. I was getting something from underneath the table, and I had neither my hands nor my eyes on her. I have read a zillion times in every book ever written about babies not to take your hands off them for even one tiny second, and I still did it. I can't even begin to explain how I thought it would be ok because right now, in hindsight, all of my reasons sound really, really dumb.

I took her to the medical centre to get checked out and thankfully, a doctor said she'd be fine. I thought her brand new little tooth might have been knocked out. I thought she might have damaged her jaw, or got a concussion. As it turns out, apparently babies' bones are very soft at this age and rarely break. I have to look out for certain signs (loss of limb control, vomiting, fitting, – duh – listlessness, etc) and if necessary, take her to A&E. I think it might be a fitful night sleep for me as I will be wanting to check on her every 5 minutes.

She has a little tiny graze mark on her chin, poor baby, which to me looks like a great big flashing red beacon saying 'Bad mother! Bad mother!'

I sent a text to my sister while waiting to see the Doctor because it was a busy, impersonal place and I wanted someone to tell me that I wasn't as bad as I was feeling. I knew her son had also fallen at about the same age and I was after some solidarity. Big luvvies to her as she sent back a message straight away telling me it wouldn't be Anna's first fall and "they all grow up eventually". Someone give that woman a bouquet.

Look out Tooth Fairy, here comes Anna

2006-04-30T13:29:00.000+08:00

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

2006-04-29T12:55:00.000+08:00

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

2006-04-28T21:03:00.000+08:00

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

2006-04-26T15:39:00.000+08:00

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...

2006-04-16T12:34:00.000+08:00

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

2006-04-15T12:25:00.000+08:00

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

2006-04-10T22:02:00.000+08:00

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!

2006-04-07T20:01:00.000+08:00

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

2006-04-01T21:12:00.000+08:00

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

2006-04-01T20:24:00.000+08:00

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.

You talking to me?

2006-03-31T12:32:00.000+08:00

I think Anna recognised her name this morning. She was having some 'tummy time' (why does this have to be supervised? That rule was drummed in to me so much at the beginning of my trek into motherhood that I dutifully follow it unquestioningly, but it did occur to me that other day as I was sprinting down the hall to fetch something, and sprinting back again in a panic lest the Tummy Time Police had come to snatch Anna away in my 20 second absence, that I had no idea why this particular activity needs to be supervised any more than any other. Presumably, it's in case the babes spontaneously fall asleep whilst on their bellies posing the SIDs risk; if so I don't feel it's something I need to particularly worry about with my 'I don't need to nap' cherub). Anyway, Anna was trying to stuff a corner of her activity centre into her mouth sans hands and even if she did have a handle on the gross motor skills, anyone could see it was just not going to happen due to size differences but I felt that the effort needed to be applauded. So after a particularly strenuous attempt with much huffing and puffing, her little head drooped while she caught her breath and I felt it appropriate to yell "Yay Anna! Go for it!" from my Suduku puzzle. Up came the head and she swivelled around to eyeball me (I was hoping for a smile, but no such luck this morning), before starting on a fresh attempt to eat the toy.

I like to think it's her name she recognised, rather than merely being annoyed at the interruption to her concentration.

Blowing kisses

2006-03-30T21:15:00.000+08:00

Anna has discovered how to make 'kiss blowing' noises, and makes them all the time at truly appropriate moments! Complete with pursed lips and all! It's gorgeous.

Honestly, she really is the cutest baby in the world.

The Indian Girl

2006-03-23T22:20:00.000+08:00

Anna and I were watching the Commonwealth Games the other day, just for something different, and we happened to tune in while the Women's weightlifting finals were on. This is not the sort of thing that I would ever have thought I'd find interesting, but it was strangely compelling to watch.

Bu what a couple of wallies were commentating! They seemed to have arrived at the commentating box minus their notes, as the whole time they were calling the lifts, not once did they refer to the Indian competitor by name. Even when she lifted 105kg as effortlessly as a straw, and clinched the gold medal, it was "oh and she's won it!! The Indian Girl wins Gold at the Commonwealth Games!!"

Hey bozos, she has a name!

So, Geeta Rani, on behalf of us Aussies: congratulations on your gold medal, and sorry about our terribly rude commentators.

Viva la mung bean

2006-03-14T22:22:00.000+08:00

I am a vegetarian. I have been solidly so for the past 6 years but have dickered about with it, on and off, since I was 17.

Just for the record before I start my rant, I will state here that I am 36 years old and I have been solely responsible for feeding myself for at least ½ my life. And, let's be blunt, I am still very much alive.

So. If I hear one more person ask, "Have you thought about how your diet is going to affect Anna?" or, "Are you going to 'make' Anna vegetarian?" I think I may just have to get very stroppy indeed.

I love my daughter very, very much. No one else in the whole world is capable of loving her as much as I do. Her safety and wellbeing are always paramount in my thoughts and will be at least until she is an adult; I suspect it will continue to be so until I toddle off to face whatever there is to be faced when we die. All of my kangaroo's are present and correct in my top paddock. I find it terribly annoying and offensive when people ask me these questions because I can only assume it means they think that I am either lax in my mothering duties, or an absolute idiot.

OF COURSE I HAVE THOUGHT ABOUT ANNA'S DIET! I did not just bring her home from hospital and dig out the encyclopaedia to find out which end did what.

It's especially galling when I think that most of these self same meat eating people might not be as healthy as us tofu munchers, because meat tends to become a catch-all food that often replaces vegetables and legumes, etc etc, in a healthy balanced diet. Especially in Australia, anyway, where as a nation we pride ourselves on having lots of exotic species of animal, and have found ways to catch and cook them all. So I imagine all of those good people eating some form of meat for breakfast, lunch and dinner don't often stop to think about whether they are getting all the vitamins and minerals they actually need. They just smother the lot in tomato sauce and shovel it in. Then they pass all this good food knowledge onto their kids, who grow up with a deep distrust of any green vegetable (anyone need some iron?), any raw vegetable no matter what colour (except sliced cabbage and carrot drowned in mayo – more saturated fat, anyone?), or any form of protein that doesn't come with a bone (how about a varied diet?).

And then they glare at me and struggle to keep the accusatory tone out of their voices when they question me about Anna's perceived lack of nutrition.

Everyone who eats is on a diet of some sort, most of them not of the weight loss kind. Mine just happens to be sufficiently different enough to have a label. Most long term vegetarians actually think quite a lot about what we eat simply because we have to find ways to replace what we miss from meat with other foods. We don’t just eliminate the meat and carry on, otherwise we'd all be keeling over quite often from anaemia and exhaustion.

As for whether I will 'make' Anna be vegetarian – I'm aiming to not make Anna anything at all. I will still find some room to love her even if she becomes the CEO of a company making a fortune from whaling and baby seal clubbing. Just like every other Aussie kid, meals will be prepared and she'll eat them at the table (or palm them off to the dog) with her family. She will have just as much choice in her diet as every other kid in Australia (which is really stuff all). When she's older she'll have access to as much information as I can give her about food and she can go from there – just like every other kid.

In the meantime, everyone else can bugger off.

Thanks for the feed, mum

2006-03-13T20:35:00.000+08:00

I am starting to discover those little special moments that I have heard parents go on about in the past. Those snippets of time that make all the difficult stuff seem manageable and all the distasteful stuff seem enjoyable.

In the mornings, Anna comes into bed with me for her morning breakfast. I lie on my side (trying not to feel like an old sow with a squirming piglet) and she rolls onto her side to tuck in. Most times, she attacks the breast like she's been wandering the desert for days; zeros in on her target, grabs me with both hands and zooms in. But every once in a while, she'll stop mid-zoom, look up at me, and give me a great big joyous smile. It last for a couple of seconds and lights up the bedroom as well as my life, then she gets on with the business of filling her tum.

And I think: that was a precious moment. Best not forget it.

Welcome to guilt land

2006-02-01T22:19:00.000+08:00

You don't need a passport for Guilt Land, but you did need great big bags – smack bang under your eyes.

When I watched Trainspotting and got to the part where the Ewan McGregor character was locked in his room by his parents to get him off heroin, and he was screaming and begging them to let him out, I blithely thought, gee, bet that was hard, and then the thought was gone and I got freaked out by watching the poor dead baby crawl across the ceiling.

Of course, that was in my carefree pre-mother days. Now I am facing the terrifying prospect of teaching my 4 month old daughter to go to sleep on her own without me to rock her. I watch her kicking and crying, out of the corner of my eye because I am studiously avoiding eye contact while patting and 'shhhhhhh-ing', and she's trying to catch my eye so she can work her hormonal magic on me so I will pick her up, and I suddenly have a brand new empathy for all the parents who have to deny their children something they really want. Bugger the pain that Ewan was going through, what about poor Mum and Dad wringing their hands while pacing the corridor outside?!

I have just returned from an all-day sleep school to teach myself how to teach Anna, because although I knew the reasons about getting her to go to sleep on her own, I wasn't really getting the practice and the guilt and anxiety was getting me down, to say the least. Having convinced myself that I was, in fact, not doing the right thing but was really buggering up the bond between Anna and I, destroying her trust in me and thus destroying her ability to ever trust anyone ever again, and generally stomping all over her psyche and trashing her emotional needs which would naturally condemn her to a dysfunctional and emotionally barren adult life, I rang every help line in existence, booked myself the emergency day stay, and then spent four days rocking her to sleep in my arms, in her pram, or in my bed, so she didn't have to so much as whimper.

It was very quiet around here for those four days, but on the inside, I was very, very, quietly going insane. I was shattered. Enough to realise that she had to learn to do it on her own because I was not up to doing it for her. So off to sleep school, where I got a heavenly day's rest and people brought me cups of tea and cake, I learnt to tell Anna's different cries apart, I got lots of reassurance that I had not and will not emotionally scar her for life, and I was encouraged to stay out of her room after I'd put her down for a sleep and not get overwrought when she cried.

Except, when I got home, I found I couldn't do that last part on my own. So I've modified the plan: I stay in the room with her, sitting on a chair next to her cot. Sometimes patting, singing, or stroking, but mainly just sitting – so she knows I'm there. I don't often pick her up, and she lets me know her displeasure at this loud and clear, but that's OK. She's allowed to be angry at me, if she wants. The important thing for me was to reassure myself that she knew she was not alone. And if anyone wonders how can I just sit there and listen to her cry? I say, it's a hell of a lot less macabre than going about my life cooking my dinner, watching the TV, surfing the net, while she's in another room howling her head off.

I know this bucks the theory. I know if she learns to sleep with me there, she won't be able to sleep when she's on her own. But I started thinking, why should she learn to sleep on her own at this young age, anyway? Who decided that? She's only 4 months old. From a biologically instinctive point of view, it's probably a very good idea that she doesn't sleep on her own. Any sole-sleeping Neanderthal babies probably made very good snacks for passing sabre tooth tigers, or woke up to find the tribe had moved on without them because someone forgot to pack the baby. At some stage down the track, Anna and I will graduate on to me not being there, and if it's made that little bit harder because of what I'm doing now, then so what – I was never under any illusion that this parenting lark was going to be easy.

Staffy vs Baby

2006-01-29T16:31:00.000+08:00

I am slowly learning the setbacks of napping vs dog in the household. Buddy is a Staffy cross and anyone who owns a Staffy will agree with me that they have no believe whatsoever in the concept of personal space. 'Too close is not close enough' is a popular Staffy philosophy.

I think that Buddy does like Anna (or at least will tolerate her presence, and that's good enough for me), even though he may be opposed to the shocking concept of only one walk a day (and sometimes, it's not even in the morning! Sometimes he has to wait the whole day until the afternoon! What a travesty in the poor dog's life). So, just to show how much he cares, when he walks past her or her pram he will leave just enough room for one thin coat of paint, with a little lick of any available foot or hand sticking out for good measure. Or, he will help me overcome my boredom of rolling Anna back and forth 8000 times in her pram by bringing his tug toy over for me and 'telling' me he wants to play. (Staffy's are vocal dogs and another Staffy mantra is 'why say it quietly when you can yowl it out at full growl?') Or sometimes if he feels the need for a good shake he will come right over to share his hair with the peaceful baby. Maybe he thinks she looks cold and needs some extra quilting?!

Another thing about Staffy's: they are bulky, stocky dogs and they know it. So why give a slightly ajar door just a little nudge to walk through it, when you can barge through in a rugby scrum? Why give a little whimper noise at a closed door to let someone know you want to come in, or out, when you can head-but the thing with enough force to rattle the house? Or why climb daintily and softly off your chair, when you can hurl yourself to the ground with enough noise to measure on the Richter scale?

None of this behaviour leaves the baby peaceful for very long. He smiles away at me, joyful in the face of my murderous glaring, knowing full well that I have my hands too full of grizzly baby to chase him outside and the new mush where my brain used to be means I will have forgotten his actions after five minutes.

Buddy may have been usurped from the centre of my attention, but he certainly knows how make sure he doesn't become an invisible member of the household.

Welcome to my blog

2006-01-20T21:28:00.000+08:00

This blog will be more or less about Anna and my new and mostly improved life with her. I am Anna's mum, and I'll be the contributor, administrator, and general overlord of the site at least until Anna is old and wise enough to sneak in and change my password when I am not looking.

At the moment she is only a few months old, so I figure I have at least the rest of the year to revel in my autocracy; maybe even a few months beyond.

I hope you like it. If not, duh, this is the Internet, you can always bugger off and Google something else.