motherhood

Mummy, would you like a nap with that?

Angus, my two and a half year old, knows all about his bedtime routine.

So much so that on Monday this week, after making me cups of tea using his toy kettle, he decided he would put me down for a nap on the couch.

First he put a cushion under my head. Then he put a cushion under my feet.

Then he asked – no, instructed – me to take off my glasses, put them on the coffee table and to close my eyes. He then trotted off to get me a blanket.

Once I was all set up, he went and got his little red chair and set it down next to the couch.

I asked him if he was going to sing to me, and he sat down and said, “Yes.” So we sang Amazing Grace together.

Then I asked him if he was going to read to me, and again he said, “Yes.”

He got down from his little red chair, walked over to our Expedit bookcase in the playing area and then returned with Maisy’s Bedtime. He opened the book and proceeded to tell me what was happening on each page. It was utterly delightful listening to him, especially when we reached the two page spread depicting Maisy using the toilet and by her side is her toy Panda using a small potty. Angus’ (very accurate) description of this was: “Big wee, and small wee.”

After he finished Maisy’s Bedtime, I asked him for “one more book” and then another and then another. He ended up reading six books to me. I thought this was very generous of him considering I only ever read three books to him at most during bedtime. (I’m stingy, I know.)

What can I say – this little boy just keeps surprising me every day.

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Confessions of a mum called Ronnie

1) I have been watching Oprah again since coming home from the hospital. Even worse, I’ve actually caught one or two episodes of The Hills. I blame the midday feed…

2) Believe it or not, I do not gaze at my baby with undulating adoration all the time.

3) I always fall asleep whilst doing the late night and early morning feeds. I’ve even tried propping the bottle between James’ tiny unsuspecting hands on the off chance that he’s already worked out how to hold it for himself. No such luck.

4) I let Angus and Pete watch Play School. A LOT.

5) I don’t always change James’ nappy every time he does a poo.

6) I often expect my kids to do exactly as I say. Even if they’re only two and a half (“Eat your dinner Angus!”), thirteen months (“Stop crying Pete!”) and three weeks old (“Go to sleep James!”).

7) Sometimes I keep napping even when I can hear the boys crying.

8) I let Angus drink milkshakes.

9) I feed Pete endless jars of baby food.

10) I give James more formula than breast milk.

Hi, my name is Ronnie and I’m just a mum who’s trying to make it work.

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It’s all coming back to me now

It’s funny how quickly you forget certain things about newborn babies and how quickly it all comes back in a mad rush.

For example, I’d forgotten about the spraying poo phenomenon – until one afternoon when I had my hand in the wrong place at the wrong time, and it all came back to me. Yes it did, Celine Dion. (If you don’t get that reference, then you are probably too young to be reading my blog…).

I’d also forgotten about how often newborns actually poo. Is there anything crueller than having cleaned, wiped, dried and sudo-creamed your baby’s bottom, only to then have more poo come out just as you’re about to ‘close up’ and put on a cup of tea?

On the flip side, I’ve been quickly reminded of how tiny (and precious) newborns are – and how tiny (and cute!) their feet and toes are! I could seriously just stare at them forever.

And that beautiful newborn baby smell – it’s an aroma that’s almost powerful enough to make me forget about that last hour of labour exactly two weeks ago today.

I’ve also been enraptured by the long intent gazes that James has been giving me after a feed. It’s so easy to forget that these little people can actually think, recognise and process sounds, images, words and voices from day one. Absolutely amazing, it is.

But most of all, I am remembering every day how lucky I am to be able to watch James grow and change every moment of the day. When I look at our tiny little man, all I can think is –

“How is it that you are ours? We are so very, very blessed….”

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A bit of cluckiness never goes astray


Fridays are my Pete days.

Angus is at daycare (or ‘playschool’ as we like to call it) and so Pete and I have the entire day together.

I have really come to enjoy this last day of the so-called working week, where I can spend some special ‘alone time’ with my little chubby man.

Last Friday, for example, we spent several hours at Macquarie together running errands and drinking coffee (don’t worry, I asked for an especially weak one for him). He was such lovely company – he was content the entire time he was in the pram and then when I finally took him out at The Loft Cafe, he was all sorts of happy.

Seriously, I could not have asked for a happier, more cheerful little person.

I can’t believe he’s ten days away from turning ten months. In many ways, I still think of him as my newborn – which is ridiculous, I know, but it really didn’t seem like that long ago that I was feeding and changing him (and getting peed on) during our first few nights together at the hospital.

Anyway, it’s not long now until James arrives, so I’m determined to savour these last few months with Pete as my littlest ‘baby.’

Well, what do you know, there he goes crying now – I guess I’m off to do some ‘savouring.’

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I do art

My two year old never fails to surprise me.

This morning after Rick had left for work, he began running around in hysterics with his shoes in hand shouting “Car! Car! Car!” By the time I’d pulled on my trusty jeggings and was attempting to cover up my racoon bags with Garnier’s roll-on concealer, I had had it.

“That’s enough!” I half-barked at him as I held him by the shoulders and looked him very sternly in the eye. “We will go in the car, but only after mummy gets ready, Pete gets ready and when mummy has packed food for you and Pete. Okay? OKAY!? So stop shouting and stop running around. PLEASE!”

Clearly, I’d lost sight of all the tried-and-tested parenting advice about ignoring or distracting one’s screaming toddler. Instead, I was opting for the irrational I-am-going-to-talk-to-my-child-like-he’s-an-eighteen-year-old-and-expect-him-to-respond-in-kind-OR-ELSE.

And respond in kind Angus did. He stopped shouting, looked at me for a few moments, nodded his head very seriously, turned around and started making his way to Pete’s room – supposedly to help get him ready.

Mum – 0. Angus – 1.

Anyway, this afternoon I tried to re-create art.

Or more specifically, I tried to re-create a piece of art that Pierce Brosnan’s character steals in The Thomas Crown Affair called The Faceless Businessman.

This was my re-interpretation:

Get it?

He has an apple. I have an Apple – phone. (Steve Jobs should be paying me to come up with stuff like this.)

Even though The Faceless Businessman is not actually the correct name of the original artwork* (I know this because my friend Google told me), I shall give mine the title:

The Faceless Mum Who Hasn’t Had Time To Brush Her Hair.

*It is actually called The Son of Man, and it is by the artist René Magritt.

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Man, I feel like a good mum!

(Sing that to Shania Twain’s song please.)

Today I felt like a good mum.

Somehow I managed to: feed the boys, put them in the car, drive them around, take them to the doctor’s, buy them medicine, feed them again, keep them entertained, give them their bottles, put them down for naps, change their nappies, feed them some more, put them in the car again, and pick up their daddy from work with them.

And I did all this without losing my patience. Not once did a screaming match take place inside my head.

Is that a bad thing? That my personal definition of ‘a good mum’ has been reduced to ‘no verbal or mental screaming matches?’

Actually, some days the definition is even thinner than that. Some days it’s: ‘sobbing for only fifteen minutes on the bed at midnight in mismatching pajamas while rational and devoted husband tries to console me with Milo and convince me that I’m not a big failure of a mum.’

But the point is (which I’m really struggling to get to tonight), today was the first time in a long while that I felt like I can do this.

That perhaps I’m not as inept at motherhood as I’d previously feared. That maybe I will be able to survive the next five to ten years of having little people dictate when I get to eat, when I get to sleep (or not sleep), when I get to use the bathroom, when I get to drink a (cold) cup of tea, when I get to brush my teeth, clean my face, cut my nails, wash my hair, etc and still come out the other end smiling (somewhat) and standing upright.

And then after that? Teenagedom. And if my own experience of adolescence is anything to go by, I just know I am going to be wishing I was back to changing diapers again.

But let’s not not go there for now.

Tonight I just want to savour feeling like I’m a good mum (in much the same way that Shania Twain feels like a woman).

Even if the feeling doesn’t continue past sunrise tomorrow, at least tonight I can drink my hot Milo in my flannel pajamas and feel like I deserve it.

To all my fellow mums out there: Cheers!

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Sorry, no pit stop today

Don’t you just love it when you’ve finally got the kids settled down for their midday nap, the house is all quiet, you’ve put everything away, you’ve made yourself a snack, and you’re finally about to sit down and RELAX for the first time when suddenly, your two year old starts talking and knocking on his bedroom wall and your eight month old begins to scream at the top of his lungs.

And just like that, the half-hour relaxation window that you’ve been craving all day disappears with a big fat ‘poof!’ and a very piercing ‘WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!’

Seriously, it’s times like this that I wish I had a nanny. Or sound-proof ear muffs. Or a baby whisperer at my beck and call. Or the ability to hypnotise children (Is that wrong?).

Instead, I have a half-eaten banana, a cold cup of tea and, oh, that’s right, another baby on the way. Maybe this baby will be some sort of a baby baby whisperer, ie. a baby who can talk to other babies and convince them that sleeping and resting is a good and fun thing to do.

Okay, less (insane) talk and more action. Might as well accept today is a ‘no pit stop’ day and do something about the screaming before the neighbours call DOCS.

Ciao.

p.s. I love my boys. Have I not made that clear?

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Tantrums, rainstorms & stupid gruesome movies

A quick Saturday recap:

1) On Saturday, I discovered what a truly impatient mum I am. Rick was out for most of the day, so I had the boys to myself. If my life was a fairytale and I was a fairy-like mum, we would’ve spent the most perfect day together made up of sunshine, milkshakes, cream buns and fairy floss (actually, not sure if I’m thinking of fairytales or my own appetite here) with no tears and lots of laughter. Instead, we had rain, lightning and thunder (thanks to the crazy Sydney weather), and every time the little boy Angus whinged, his wicked mum just lost it. Every single time. Friends – what do I do? I don’t want to be such an impatient mum. I don’t want to be a mum who has a tanty every time her child has a tanty. To all the wiser and more experienced mums out there – please send me some much-needed ‘Dear Pink Ronnie’ advice.

2) Speaking of the crazy hot-one-day-rainstorm-the-next Sydney weather, it reminds me a bit of myself when I’m trying to order food. I can never decide: “Do I get the chicken sandwich? Or the chicken schnitzel? Maybe they do a good burder. Oh wait, maybe the chicken nuggets. Doh, it’s just for the kiddies. Oh wait, I have a kid! But then, what will Angus eat? Okay, maybe I’ll have the sandwich then. Oh but look, they do chicken wings too….” And so, Sydney weather, as Rick would (gently) put it: For the love of poultry, just pick something and stick to it!

3) I was looking at my blog stats and it seems that someone actually Googled ‘Blue tac in the mouth of child’ and ended up on my blog page. So maybe I’m not the only one out there…

4) We did some channel flicking on Saturday night and ended up watching a Hong Kong triad movie on SBS called SPL. Rick was absolutely enthralled. I was not so impressed with all the hard core stabbing and slashing scenes. That’s one thing I noticed about Hong Kong movies as I was growing up: they really like their knives and swords on-screen and they like to do really gruesome stuff (why can’t they take a leaf out of Hollywood’s book and just use machine guns, nuclear weapons and aliens?). Unfortunately for me, mum and dad really liked their Honkie triad movies and I always thought watching TV was a preferable option to studying for the HSC. And so I would often find myself on a weekend night sitting on the couch, averting my eyes and blocking my ears as I asked mum over and over again: “Is he dead yet? Is he dead yet? Is he dead yet?” Now that I’m thirty, it seems I’m no less capable of watching someone onscreen die painfully from a gruesome knife wound because I found myself muttering the same thing to Rick on Saturday night: “Is he dead yet? Is he dead yet? Is he dead yet? What, how can he still be alive? It’s been, like, ten minutes! Stupid made-in-Hong-Kong movie…”

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Watermelons & enlightenment

There’s nothing like shopping in a suburb like Newtown – a place where young, hip, skinny, tall, beautiful, and did I mention skinny, girls like to shop – to make you feel just a teeny weensy tad inadequate about your body image.

Mary, Rick’s mum, had kindly come over today to help look after Angus in order to free me up to run errands and do scrapbooking (the latter never happened).

Given the little opportunity I have to go window shopping nowadays, I decided to pop into Joshua & Sean as part of my King Street errand-running streak. There were these two dresses by the Brazilian label Totem that I had spied some days before which I thought would be uber-cool to try on.

No sooner had I pulled them over my head did I realise that I did not look uber-cool.

Instead, I looked like a watermelon. A nicely decorated watermelon at that, but a watermelon nonetheless.

I’d clearly forgotten that I was almost five months pregnant when I’d optimistically pictured myself looking good in the dresses.

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