Chrissy Questions

I've been working. Yep. And loving it. But it doesn't leave much time for much else (especially after the washing, dishes, lunch making etc). So I have just read the couple of blogs I try to keep in touch with and came across this list of questions on Catha's blog. Sounds like fun. I am a HUGE Christmas fan. The antithesis of Scrooge.

1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate?

Ahh. Questions written by a Nth American I see. A good cold beer for me thanks (or some of Cath's Dad's punch if I'm lucky enough ... and brave enough ... and not breastfeeding).

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree?

Puts them unwrapped in the Santa Sack.

3. Coloured lights on tree/house or white?

Lights on house for the first time this year. I've always wanted to do it but couldn't be bothered rigging up the electricity. This time, as I pulled the lights out I tripped over an extension cord, so up went the lights on the varandah. Oh yeah, they're coloured. And the ones on the tree flash differently when you press the button, and they're coloured too. And the ones over the door are white and the other ones are white but have little Santa covers on them (does that count as white or coloured? What a weird thing to ask anyway? Do people have a real preference on such things?).

4. Do you hang mistletoe?

Wouldn't even know where to get some.

5. When do you put your decorations up?

Not before December, but as soon as December starts I start gathering my thoughts and trying to find a tree.

6. What is your favourite holiday dish?

Ham. The ham that you can only buy around Xmas. Cold ham on the bone. I have already bought and eaten my first leg of ham this year.

7. Favourite Holiday memory?

My memory sucks. I love holidays while they last though!

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa?

I have a vague memory of being in Mum and Dad's bathroom when it happened. Told you my memory sucked.

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve?

No. Of course not. What a question. Is Christmas Eve Christmas? No!


10. How do you decorate your Christmas Tree?

With balls, lights and tinsel? How else do you decorate a tree? This year the balls, lights and tinsel all start about 2 feet off the ground so Aoife can't eat them.

11. Snow! Love it or Dread it?

I'm sorry, I just can't rival this answer from Cath so I have to copy/paste it. I haven't laughed so hard in a while - part in the writing and part in recognition of the picture the writing painted.

never much thought about it at christmas time ("6 white boomers" for me, no "i'm dreaming of a white christmas") until a few years ago when i was in korea for my first potential white christmas. in truth, it ended up being just plain cold. yeah there was snow... but snow isn't as romantic when it's been turned into brown sludge by the traffic and there's some korean dude at the bottom of the hill trying to dig his car out of the ice with his shoe. this year, i'm pretty much dreading it. but i'll be ok... sigh...

12. Can you ice skate?

Yep. Not well. Not like a Canadian. Not backwards. But yep, I can get around and have fun.

13. Do you remember your favourite gift?

Refer above. I tend to like anything that's wrapped up and a surprise so there's been lots of favourites.

14. What's the most important thing about Christmas?

Family. (Presents are a very close second).

15. What is your favourite Holiday Dessert?

I used to hate Chrissy Pudding 'til the Christmas I was first pregnant. That Christmas I hate 3 helpings and I haven't looked back since. Although, even when I didn't like it I still loved the tradition of putting the sixpences in it.

16. What is your favourite holiday tradition?

Handing out the presents from under the tree. It was usually me and one or two other of the cousins who did it.

16.5 What is your least favourite holiday tradition?

Who has a least favourite holiday tradition??? That is just a weird concept. Everything about holidays is fun, and if it isn't it certainly doesn't become a tradition.

17. What tops your tree?

This year it's a really funky reindeer. Usually it's some dodgy handmade vague star-shaped affair.

18. Which do you prefer giving or receiving?

Both.

19. Favourite Christmas Song?

There's one floating around on YouTube about a Holden Ute to the tune of Dashing through the snow. I'm not a fan of Christmas music on the whole, but that one is gold.

P.S. Will has just located the song and informed me it's to the tune of Jingle Bells, which happens to usually have 'Dashing through the snow' as a first line - told you I wasn't really big on Christmas music.

Sponser Will for Movember

As an official Mo Sista I invite you all to click on the widget and sponser my Mo Bro to raise money for Men's depression and cancer.

City v Country

I grew up in the country. I spent afternoons after school in the orchard. My first job was driving the ute from tree to tree as we picked the pears in the small orchard (the one at home was small enough so we didn't bother employing pickers, the main orchard was 2 miles down the road). I was eight. I crashed the ute into a tree because I was driving so slowly and such a short distance that the instructions didn't place much emphasis on the brake. I was shown the accelerator, told how to slowly let off the clutch then told to put my foot on the clutch and take it off the accelerator when I wanted to stop. I'm sure I was told where the brake was, but my memory is of taking my foot off the accelerator and wondering why the car kept rolling slowly into the tree.



The car crashing is just one of many memories I'm sure I wouldn't have if I grew up in the city. This is my dilemma. I really want the kids to grow up in the country. So does Will. But I have to wonder if the childhood I had can be got for my kids. Is it still possible to drive around with a few kids, a dog and a whole heap of yabby nets in the back of the ute? Or get pulled down the road on your roller skates by the dog (a road where the the speed limit is 100 k/hr and that's considered a minimum). Or ride your bike 6 miles home when you're in Primary School? I think not.



However I think new laws and changing social norms are not the real things stopping my babies having the childhood I had. It is the lack of two things: my grandfather and a farm.



Without a farm you couldn't learn to drive at 8. You couldn't make 'drag tracks' for the 4-wheeler motorbikes. You would have nowhere to pull people around on skateboards without wheels behind those motorbikes. You couldn't drive a tractor. You couldn't earn your pocket money putting pheromone sticks on trees or counting Codling Moths. There would be no Italian farmhand to share his salami sandwiches with you. You would have no idea how hard, or how fun it is to wrestle a sheep to the ground. Or how cool it is to see a lamb be born. Or how stinky insides of sheep become when they're left in the sun.



Without a man like my grandfather you would be unlikely to find yourself waist deep in a drained dam catching big fish by hand. Or careering round a bend in the back of the ute at some speed that's waaay too fast. Or going to pick Prickly Pears from the local Cactus Pear trees. Or being called Lucky, Happy or Shithead rather than your name.



So, is it worth uprooting our family to move to the country? Leaving behind the friends we are slowly gathering because they too have kids? Starting that process of making a network of 'family friends' all over again? Without a farm (I will not become a farmer) and without Brucie what does the country have to offer?



I guess you don't have to own a farm to eat fruit straight from the tree. You can still go yabbying in the local channel. If you are country enough you can probably learn to drive at 12 or 14 on the back roads. There's still lots of trees. Lots of places to ride your bike. You still have to have friends over for the whole night 'cause it's too far for them to just stay an hour. Yeah, I guess it will be worth it. Besides, making friends is easier in the country right, cause everyone is friendly!

So I was reading this article in The Bulletin the other day - well actually it was over about 3 days cause that's how long it takes me to finish anything in the 'leisure that doesn't include kids' category - anyway, the article was about Facebook, and parts of it got me a little mad. Not much, just enough to make me put my two cents out there.

Why is it that people can't accept Internet communication as 'real' communication? Email is snail mail's poor cousin. An ecard is what you send if you haven't got your arse into gear to send a 'real' card. Blogs don't rate as high as newspapers or magazines (although the content is often much more insightful) and Facebook is apparently "as much about obsessing over the dull details of my life as it is about connecting with others". Well here's how I see it.

People choose. People choose which method of communication they use and how often they use it. Online methods are no better or worse. Nor do they have to replace the 'old' methods, they can just be added as options. Personally, I'd rather receive a 'real' card for my birthday so I can put it on the mantelpiece for a week (or 6, depending on when I get around to recycling it!). I do love getting letters, but would rather receive bi-weekly email updates than once-a-month out-of-date snail mail.

As for Facebook, well as far as I can see, it's just a communication gold-mine. I post photos to keep everyone up-to-date on the kids growth spurts, drop a little line to my close friends every now and then, catch up with cousins I haven't seen in years and just keep an eye on everyone else. What it means to me is information. Knowing what everyone is up to keeps them closer. Having a young family when most of my friends have dogs means that I don't get to see them very often. When I do, I spend most of the time catching up on the 'big' things I've missed (new job, latest dodgy boss story, holiday news) and never get down to the nitty gritty. I don't know what their day-to-day lives are like. I miss that. If all of my friends were on Facebook (many are now) and just posted little updates on their wall every now and then I could read the day-to-day stuff and be able to have 'real' conversation when I do see them.

I am a communicator by nature. I remember nearly all my cousins birthdays and ring or send cards. I keep friends. I am still in contact with people I haven't seen more than once or twice in the last 10 years. My longest friendship has now been running 27 yrs and 7 months - since I was 30 days old. What I love about technology is it makes this possible. It doesn't mean I don't send cards (and even the odd letter) or ring, it just means I also send emails, Facebook messages or have online chats in between the cards, letters and phone calls. It increases and enhances my communication.

Most of all, this instant communication means I get the day-to-day stuff that tells so much about a person. In the spirit of day-to-day stuff I am going to start a Meme (if I've remembered the term correctly). Check it out on Bubba Updates and have a go.

Gearing Up

Get ready everyone. Or should I say no one? I'm not sure, but considering how long I've been away and how small my readership was before I went, I may well be writing for no one. But I will write anyway.

I am gearing up. Tonight I've looked at my reading list for next semester, which gave me a small heart attack. $450 worth of books for 2 subjects. That's a bloody lot of money for a few mashed up trees.

I'm not sure I'm ready. Ready for study? Yes. Ready to put my bubba in childcare for the first time at a mere tiny weeny little 6 months? No. Ready for my little man to go from 1/2 a day in care to 4 1/2 days? No. I miss them already. I catch myself picturing leaving them and realise I'm squeezing the life out of them (literally, I have to loosen my hug).

These feelings don't surprise me anymore. Before Euey was born I thought I could birth him in mid June and return to study the next semester in August when he was 6 weeks old. When he was 6 weeks old I realised how stupid that thought was. He was TINY. TINY I tell you. There was no way I was leaving him - I didn't care who with, I didn't want to be away from him. When I left him at childcare for the first time at 6 1/2 months I did very well not to cry. I hated it. He was balling when I left and cried when I got there to pick him up (I guess the emotion of having Mummy back was just too much). Of course he grew to love it, but those first couple of months were really crap.

You see, having kids has confirmed something. I am first and foremost a Mum. I would love to stay at home with them 'til the last one went to school. I wouldn't be bored (all the time). I wouldn't get frustrated (okay, sometimes). i would love every minute of it (well, enough of those minutes to make it worthwhile). But it is not practical. I have to finish my degree before they decide I've taken too long and boot me out. I have to get into the workplace so we can stop being a one-income family. We have stuff we want to do. Holidays, new cars, buy a house. Important stuff. Compromise is a shitty thing I have decided. We did this kid thing now cause we wanted to. So I could have more time with the kids cause I was studying. It worked. I wouldn't take it back. I do have more time than if I was at work. But I it's still a compromise. I don't have every waking moment with my bubbas. And that SUCKS ARSE.


P.S. Get ready for some law-theme thoughts and wonderings as in a few short weeks they will be consuming my every brain cell.

What's on your fridge?

Daffa posted a few pics of her fridge. She has a theory that your fridge may be the part of your house that gives the biggest insight into your life and person. I think she may be onto something there, so here's my fridge ...

Right hand side: Local 'EasterFest' ad ripped out of the local news to remind us to go (we forgot) - held up by one of the magnets from Euey's magndoodle and a magnet outlining immunisation schedule.

Left hand side: More immunisation reminders and shedules, library book receipt to remind me to take them back (they were 3 weeks late when i finally did), timetable of Tiny Tot sessions at local library.

Front: Writing from when my brother had the fridge while we were in Korea (Tunzafun?!), pictures from the plastic apron I made Euey's high chair cover out of, flyer for local Primary School Fair, picture of us with shaved heads from Thaliand, magnet with timetable of home games of the Melbourne Demons (Australian Football League).

Top: The fruit bowl, basket full of medication and other random shit and the Pucca clock from Korea are always there, the other stuff just accumulates (Will's footy magazine, cooler for a baby bottle, packet of re-writable dvds).

I am tagging Bon for this one as I have heard about a cutsie lunchbox being spotted in one of her photos and I'd love to see if she has any other Korean remnents lurking on her fridge.

Mother's Day

Catching up on the news this evening and a discussion on Mother's Day in The Australian caught my eye. The original article claimed that not only mothers mother. That limiting Mothers' Day to mothers hurts women and children. What about nannies, next-door-neighbours and the women who 'get the kids to footy or netball training'? ask the authors. What about children who don't have a mother but want to recognise someone who mothers them, aren't they included?

Caroline Overington rails against the idea that mothers are no more special to their children than the lady next door. She says:

Mothers know what mothers are. They are people with a piece of their heart always on fire. They are people who would give up the last scrap of food in a famine; the last drop of water from a tap; the last blanket in a storm. Take their children from them and you will soon find them walking incessantly in circles; pulling holes in their jumpers, tearing hair from their scalp.

I LOVE this summation of motherhood. But I think both authors have missed the point. On Mother's Day, given half a chance, children will recognise whoever they feel is a Mum. We don't have to artificially broaden the definition of Mum so that every women who goes near a kid is included. Nor do we have to limit it to just Mums. It will just happen. The kid of a single Dad who goes to the lady next door every day after school will give her a kiss on the cheek and a cheeky 'Happy Mother's Day Mum'. The kid who's in day care 'cause Mum and Dad have to pay the bills will hug their carer extra hard that day. Kids everywhere will buy or make cards for Mums, Grandmums, Stepmums, Fostermums and whoever else they want. And this year I will ring Anna, Euey's Good-Mum and he will say 'log-oo* Anna'. I hope that will become a tradition.

log-oo = Love You.

Bon's interveiw.

Bon has kindly invited me to join the interview game. Thanks Bon. And GREAT questions by the way!


1. you've done a fair bit of moving around and trying new things, and now you're settled back in the homeland. if i told you that you and Will and the bubs could all move anywhere in the world for a year, all expenses paid...would you uproot again and go? and where would you choose? and why?

Can I take a few liberties here? Thanks. I would move you, us and Jen, James & Zoe to England, and the six of us would live for a year together with our bubbas. The all expenses paid would be extended to your family and theirs and we would all have a year of fun together. That way the kids could get to know their cousins and some of our closest friends all in one year. Come to think of it, hang the all expenses thing, why don't we all look for jobs in London and do it anyway?!

2. you have the opportunity to star in a fabulous indie movie and pick your romantic lead...with whom you will then go film on location for a month.who do you choose? what does Will think?

I'd love to star with Jack Nicholson, but really, who wants him as a romantic lead??? Richard Gere would be my pick. Location for a month? I reckon Will would think 'Damn, couldn't she have picked someone cooler? If I'm going to spend a month in this place why couldn't she have picked someone I could talk to?' (You see if this were an ideal world and I was a movie star I wouldn't go on location for a month without Will and the kids. Call it a cop-out, but it's true.)

3. what's the thing you've done in your life that you're most proud of?

My first thought is the kids. But to be proud of something I've done I must not just do well at it, it must be something that at some stage I wanted to give up. Something so hard that at times I felt like throwing in the towel. Becoming and being a mum is physically hard, emotionally stressful and sometimes just downright difficult, but there has never been a time where I wanted to give it all away. Maybe in the very early days with Euey I would have loved to give him to someone else for a day, but only one day and I'm sure I wouldn't have been able to stay away the whole day.
I guess then, it must be law. I am proud of being accepted to study law. I'm proud that I'm getting some good results despite juggling study with kids. I'm proud that I haven't given it up as a bad joke. I'm proud that I've managed not to let the kids suffer. And I'm proud that I've allowed myself to see that I am not letting the kids suffer and that my results are good in the circumstances. I guess I'm proud that I'm allowing myself to be proud.
It was hard at first putting Euey in childcare, and really hard when I had to move him from 3 days to 5 days (although not all day, only 4 or 5 hours). I felt like I wasn't getting enough time to do well at Uni and also wasn't giving Euey enough of me. It took a long time to get over feeling like I was in the middle of a tug-o-war. I don't get all As, or even all Bs. It is the first time I've tried my guts out and still got the occasional C. I hate that. I hate Cs. Cs are failure to me. Euey having his nap and lunch without me and spending enough time in care to develop a great relationship with his carers was, at first, failure to me.
I'm proud that I can let myself accept that if I want to do both I have to lower my standards. And that's ok. It's not worse, just less. And the less means more in other areas. Studying while I have the kids means I see a lot more of them than if I went back to work. I could wait 'til they were older, then study, then work, but that would mean we live on one income for a lot longer, and that means less 'stuff' and no holidays. Unfortunately stuff is necessary, and besides, I like it. And holidays are necessary or Will would never get to see his family (they live in England). As for the uni marks, well they may not be as good as I want them to be, but by the time I'm looking for a job I will have so much life experience that someone straight out of Uni doesn't have. I think I will be a better prospect for employers because of that. And I won't have to take time out of my career to have babies. You see, there is a positive in every negative, and it is recognising that that makes me proud.

4. has there been a 'road not taken,' along the way, in any sense?something you didn't do that you wish you had?

I hate to say it, but no. A few things come to mind, only to be discarded straight away. Study law first instead of wasting time with a BA? No, then I probably wouldn't have ended up in Korea, where I met Will, made some really close friends and discovered a love of teaching. Actually study my BA, rather than get pissed every night and just scrape through? No, god no, imagine all the fun I would have missed out on. You see, as trite as it sounds, I like my life (a lot) and anything done differently wouldn't have got me here, right where I am now, where I'm as happy as Larry.

5. paint us a picture of your finished family, if you were an Angelina Jolie-type and money was no object. how many more kids would you add to your ideal family? would you birth them all or adopt? if so, from where?what gender(s) would you choose for your next child(ren) if it were all up to you?

Will and I always discussed adopting a child. We worked with some orphans in Korea and through a friend who was an orphan came to understand the lowly place in Korean society that they occupy. Made us want to 'rescue' one. My Dad's response was always 'once you have your own child you won't want anything else'. Now that I do have my own children I see what he means. Looking at the physical features of a tiny bubba and seeing yourself or your partner is a wonder I still can't get over. But that doesn't mean I don't want to adopt. Maybe. If money was no objection then almost definitely yes. But only one. I don't think I want more than 4 kids. And I want one more biological child. But does that mean the adopted one would feel left out?

See Bon taking away the parameters in which decisions like this are made just makes it all too difficult. As it stands now we are considering one more child. I don't care whether it's a boy or girl as I have one of each now. The factors that will help us decide are money and time. We would want the 3rd to be spaced the same as Euey and Aoife, about 19-20 months. If we are financially secure around the beginning of next year we'll go for it. In an ideal world it wouldn't be a question, the 3rd child would happen. Beyond that I'm not sure. It's too far away from reality for me to be able to decide.

Follow up on Mummyblogging

Do you know that I can't help but type Mummy with an 'o' every time I type mummyblogging? Obviously everyone I have read who discusses the notion is from North America. (Just a little aside.)

Bon commented this:
'i know you were never a handbag and makeup girl, nor i, but i wasn't sure where you were positioning yourself in the conversation about community after Euey was born? did you have it? lack it? notice it?'

Her comment just reinforced what I already knew. I tried to cram waaay too much into that post. I have been reading about Mummyblogging and it just brings up so many issues for me. All of which I tried to discuss in a few paragraphs. This time I will stick to the question. Thank you Bon for taking me back to high school English, where essays were easy 'cause the teacher gave you a question to answer! I need to remind myself (when I find time to post) that I cannot try to catch up on the whole conversation in one post. As I don't post every day, or even every week, I will have to content myself with discussing part of each issue.

When Euey was born I was the only one of my group of Uni friends to be married or have children. I got married 2 months before he was born (I'll post a photo later, it's kinda funny!) and it was the first wedding of our group. I had no community of parents. Will joined me up to the ABA (Australian Breastfeeding Association), which was great for parenting tips, but they were a bit 'mumsie'. They had meetings where they made soap and the conversation very rarely strayed from the day-to-day events of parenting. They were a lovely group of women and when I run into them in the supermarket I feel like I'm meeting an old friend, but I didn't have much in common with them.

My community developed from my Mum's group. The Victorian Governement has a great system of 'Maternal and Child Health Centres'. When a new mum leaves hospital the hospital contacts their neares centre and the centre drops in on the new mum within the first 2 or 3 days. After that you take your baby for check-up appoints every week for awhile then every month 'til they're a year. The centre starts Mums Groups every 6 weeks or so, connecting a small group of first time mums with other mums who have a similar aged baby. We met at the centre once a week for the first 6 weeks, then it was up to us. We were lucky. We all clicked and organised to meet at eachother's houses every week. We still meet weekly now, nearly 2 years later. I am the only one to have had another baby, but 2 others are pregnant. It is slowly building into what I think will be a life-long friendship group, but we have yet to make the step to meeting as families. The dads still don't know each other well, if at all. That is the next step, and I'm going to try to take it soon (scary for me, making new friends, there is always the fear of rejection, but that is a post for another day).

So that is the background to my in-the-flesh community. To date only one of my close friends has a baby (now 8 weeks old) and she lives in South Australia, an 8 hour drive away. I am becoming close to mum's group. I still see my non-mum friends, although now that Euey is not content to just sit in a pram while I have coffee it is getting less and less. I hope they start having babies soon before we grow apart. It is one thing to keep living your life with a portable little newborn, but when a toddler is introduced into the mix it's just gets plain hard.

This new online community I have found and am slowly becoming a part of is very different. I am made to think more and feel more involved in this community than with even my oldest friends. I think this comes from two things; shared experience and regularity of contact. My uni friends see each other often. They go swimming together on Saturday mornings, they play netball during the week and they live close to each other. They have evenings free to meet for coffee or go for dinner. When I see them as a group their conversations continue from when they last saw each other a few days ago. They're really interested to hear what I've been up to and I them, but I still feel left out. I leave wishing I could see them more often, be more involved in thier lives, know what they do each day at work, who they talk to, who shits them and whether they have a reasonable boss. Work and friendships are the main issues in their life. Family sometimes seems like the only issue in my life!

I never feel like that in the world of blogging. It is the perfect community for a group of people who need to time their conversations around nap time. I can read half a post, pause to play cars for awhile, come back and the conversation hasn't moved on without me. Then I can finish reading, make lunch, attempt to think and eventually get back a couple of hours later when Euey has been asleep long enough so I have formulated what I want to say. Then I can take my time to say it exactly how I want (well, theoretically, actually I just throw it on the page most of the time cause there are a million other things I need to be doing while Euey is alseep).

Not only can I talk in my time, but the conversations are about things close to my heart. Talking about parenting is different to talking about kids. It is not just 'Johnny is talking now and this is the latest amazing thing he said' but 'wow the development of language is really interesting, isn't it?' Nor is it 'I love being a mum'; rather its 'this is how becoming a mum has shaped me as a person'. Since I was a pre-teen I have been working toward being a good parent. It is what has driven me, what I have been working toward. My career is a secondary thing. I love studying law, and I'm sure I'll enjoy being a lawyer but a mum is what I've always wanted to be. That's what I would have answered in Careers at school if it had been an acceptable answer (women's lib, while I wouldn't change it, has a lot to answer for sometimes). This is the first community I've found where I can discuss such an important part of my 'thinking' (except with my own mum, with whom I've spent countless hours discussing parenting, and of course with Will).

So that, Bon, is what I was trying to say about community, and how it relates to mummyblogging. Mummyblogging is important because it provides that community for mummies. It is not just inane kiddy bragging because the people who are involved are intelligent, conversation-deprived, thinking people.

On the term 'mummyblogging':
I discussed this with my mum, an avid rally-going feminist from the sixties, and she was MAD. She thought the term mummyblog demeaned us and lessened the importance of what we have to say. If mummyblog refers to the fact that part of our blogs are devoted to tracking the development of our children, her line of thought is that the term should be kiddyblog. Without having thought about it before hand I guess this is the separation I made when I first started my blogs. I started two. One for updates on the kids and this one, for me to think and wonder. I made that separation. I consciously sought to give myself an arena where I could talk about things other than the kids. This was not because I think the kiddy stuff is not important but because I wanted to force myself out of my comfort zone. But I am not the one devaluing what mums have to say. If anyone is I'm sure it's not mums. The picture I get of those doing the devaluing is of men, probably traditional, 9-5 men. But that, I think, says more about my own stereotyping than anything else. When all is said and done I think mummyblogging refers to content. Mummybloggers discuss, from what I've read (and that is not much so please feel free to correct me) issues of parenting, education and family values. These are all things that a lot of people in society would agree mums are experts on. I believe that ideas coming out of such blogs on such topics would be taken seriously.

I have always been an optimist though!

Mixed Bag

Mixed bag indeed. I have many thoughts roaming around in my head. It's been awhile. It feels good. Both kids put themselves to sleep tonight and hubby is off at the football, so I have been on my first real blog exploration. (I just have to add that hubby does not make a habit of heading to the footy and leaving me with the kids, he does waaaay more than his fair share. We were planning to go as a family, but it's raining - Hallelujah - so I elected to stay home in case we couldn't get seats under cover).

Can I ramble? Oh so many tangents.

Why hallelujah about the rain? Because we're in the middle of a drought. Melbourne is on water restrictions, as is pretty much the rest of Aus land. And the rain is the good sort, real drenching rain, not the useless drizzle of a normal Melbourne winter. And it has come three days in a row now. And it seems to be over the catchment areas. And my grass is green. It hasn't been green for many months now; we're not allowed to water it anymore.

Footy, btw is Aussie Rules footy. Great game. Go the Dees.

So, where was I? Oh yes, thoughts. Thoughts in my head. This blog land is doing my brain good. Working it out. Out of its narrow focus of kids, kids and how the hell am I going to get some vegies into us all today?

I've been delving around some sites, and have to mention a couple I've enjoyed so far. Mrs Chicken of Chicken and Cheese had one I loved. I think it was a while ago she posted about
'Personal grooming and other thoughts', but being new to this blogging thing I'm not sure. And now I've closed the window and am not sure I could get there again. Gingajoy and Her Bad Mother are well worth a read and i will definitely be visiting BlogRhet again to feed my brain and push it into thinking again.

You see, I started this blog on a whim just to see if I could push myself into thinking again. I started another for friends and family, to update them on the kids, and figured I'd start one just for me as well. It took me a while to get going, but now I'm on a bit of a role. I've just had a comment from Gingajoy, someone I've never met, my first stranger-reader. It feels odd, but strangely welcoming. Like I am becoming part of the community that I have become aware of through Bon from cribchronicles (an actual live friend who I met in S. Korea). I also feel somewhat embarrassed by my blog address and name. Compared to many out there I am not really thinking or wondering much or well at this point. But, that is the point, to get back into the swing of things. After all, I will return to study next semester (August) and it would be nice not to have to spend the first 3 weeks of semester getting my brain above first gear.

I am off to bed now. Enough ranting for the moment. Thank you Gingajoy for your welcome into this (mad) world. I hope, now that I have discovered it, I have the will power to resist the lure of the computer. I tend to get stuck on my laptop to the detriment of the kids learning / playing time with me.

Night night

Mummyblogging

It's late. Late means past 10 o'clock these days. I've just dream fed Aoife and would be ready for bed myself if I hadn't been blog browsing and decided I need to add my two cents worth. Maybe just one cent, after all, it is late.

Mummyblogging. The debate / discussion is summed up really well by gingajoy at BlogRhet in the title of (I make an assumption here) her post 'Mommyblogging: Communal Activism or Self Centered Blather?'.

Self-centered? No. There is a strong argument that parents lose the ability to be self-centered as they are continually focused on someone else.
Blather? That would assume it's foolish and not useful. Quite the contrary, Mummyblogging provides a wealth of knowledge to the new mum.

My (somewhat jumbled) point is this:

Mummyblogging is based in detailing the daily routines of parenting. This is because becoming a parent is all-encompasing. It takes over your life. You care about the details. They are not mundane, each detail is an amazing event. Mummyblogs are a way of sharing the joy in the details with a community that understands and has details to offer. What's more, the details are amazing. Objectively, not just subjectively. Watching a child learn is unbelievable. If you watch your children carefully you discover how language develops, you begin to recognise the logical steps of physical development and you learn. Learn patience, learn how to speak concisely and exactly, learn, above all, how amazing the human race is and why we are at the top of the food chain. To discuss this is not blather.

6:51am the next day ...

On the usefullness of mummyblogging:

Having a child changes you. Changes your identity. Or adds a new one. Problem is, that new identity takes over. 'I' becomes 'we'. Handbags become nappy bags. 'I' like being 'we' and we never had a handbag before I had children. I spent a lot of my life waiting to be a parent. I worked towards it like others work towards a career. It did not come as a shock to me. But many women did have handbags. They went to work, they wore make-up, they had an identity that didn't involve kids. Becoming a parent was a shock to them, and in the process of that shock they lost the community they were involved in, the workplace.

Mummyblogging provides a community for the stay-at-home mum. It allows discussion with other adults. It provokes thought beyond what to put on the kids toast. It is like a conversation you can take up and put down at will. It is exactly what the intelligent stay-at-home mum needs to stop her turning into this:

...

The communal activism discussion will have to wait. I need to read. To learn more before I blather on about that issue. I think I'll check out what some other mummybloggers have said. :)

Playing Now

Here is the reason I had to mutate the meme. These are currently the 7 most played songs on my computer:

1. The wheels on the bus
2. Hokey Pokey
3. London Bridge is falling down
4. Row row row your boat
5. Fly away Peter, fly away Paul (I guess that's not technically a song, so ...
5. Five little ducks
6. I'm a little teapot
7. Ging gang gooly (gooly gooly gooly watsit)

Euey loves music. It seems indiscriminately, except for a slight leaning toward heavy rock or a lone piano. However, being musically and kinetically challenged I find it difficult to make up actions to go with most songs, so we end up dancing to the kids songs. This is better than Euey learning to dance like me!!!

Memes

I have learnt something new. Something besides how to get a toddler to come when you call (much harder than teaching a dog to come, believe me), or how to exist (not function, just exist) on nowhere near enough sleep. This something is a meme.

Bon's recent discussions on blogs, blogging and all related content has intrigued me. I have ventured to a few blogs via hers and have been so caught up I've been afraid to do it again. See I am something of a computer addict. It takes up a lot of my time and I have on occasion found myself putting Euey in front of the tv so I can have some Internet time. This worries me. An hour here or there won't hurt him, but blogs suck me in. I can browse a single blog for hours, and there are at least 20 links just on Bon's site. Each link has that many links and so on until I feel like the man coming from St Ives.

However, this meme word kept popping up so I decided to do a bit of research. It turns out I am not just blog ignorant, but generally ignorant. Meme is not the blog term I imagined. Adopted by the blogging world I'm sure, but originally the subject of a scientific work by Richard Dawkins. A name I've heard (as have I heard the title of that work, 'The Selfish Gene') but know nothing about. A meme (according to the ever-accurate Wikipedia) is 'a unit of cultural information'. A memeplex is a group of memes. As Internet-happy as I am this is the point I resort to real knowledge and take a trip to the library. As much as I support the idea of knowledge-sharing (like Wikipeida) I just don't trust that everyone knows what they're talking about. I'd rather go to the source. So I will leave this meme post with a 'to be continued' once I've located and read The Selfish Gene (or at least part of it or I'll never be back).

Before I go I'll leave my 7 songs, which is the meme that inspired this post in the first place. I have no iPod. Will has an mP3 player but I don't use it. I have a Korean mP3 player the software to which I have lost which means it's useless. My music is mostly in the archaic format of cds would you believe? So here are the top 7 songs that shaped me* (in random order, it seemed the only fair way considering the difficulty I will have limiting my list to 7 - which, btw, is a very random number).

1. The man who shot Liberty Valance - Gene Pitney.
2. Crying - Roy Orbison.
3. Papa don't preach - Madonna.
4. Coat of many colours - Dolly Parton.
5. Man of colours - Icehouse.
6. The walls came down - Travelling Wilburys.
7. We are the world - Michael Jackson & Friends.

* I think, although will get back to you after reading the book, that this is an example of a meme mutating.

Bravery defined. My friend Bon.

There are some things a person should not have to live with. There are some people who do; with dignity, grace and incredible bravery. This photo, like so many other of Bon's posts brought me to tears. This is O discovering his brother's urn beside Bon's bed. How does one live with something like that beside their bed? How can the small comfort of having that little urn so close overcome the immeasurable loss? How does she keep going?

Bon, I miss you and love reading your blog. Even though it makes me cry. You are possibly the bravest person I know and I just wanted to publicly thank you for sharing.

Pushover?

Someone close to me asked me today not to breastfeed at his party because he thought it would freak his friends out.

Someone close to me. I've never even been asked that by a stranger in a shop. In fact I've never had anything except positive feedback for breastfeeding in public. I feed anywhere I happen to be and have never felt ashamed. I've never even thought of it as an issue before. It's just so natural.

I was so shocked I actually didn't know whether I was being unreasonable in being hurt and angry at the request. I didn't really respond cause I didn't know what the response should be. Now that I've had time to process it I think I should have told him to get F'd. In the words of my sister, "there are laws against that sort of thing"!

So really, my thoughts and wonderings are this: Why am I such a pushover? Why didn't I just tell him where to go when he said it? I am always like that with friends and family, not really willing to rock the boat. I'm not so bad with strangers, more willing to let them know how I feel. Why the difference? I guess because I don't have to see the strangers again, so if I upset them or make things awkward it doesn't matter.

Hmm, one to think about I guess, as I'm not sure if it's a good or bad thing. It's interesting though, cause I'm sure if you ask any of my friends they would say I'm never shy to let people know what I think.

Enough thinking and wondering about myself for now.
Bye.

In Response to Valentine's Day Scrooges ...

Valentine's Day is just a commercial excuse to wangle money out of consumers, right? Wrong.

Valentine's day, as you said, is just like any other holiday. Father's Day is not the only day I tell Dad I love him, it's just a special day that's just for him. On Mum's Day we have a tradition of a Mother's Day picnic. It's not that we don' let our Mums know how appreciated they are on any other day, just that on that particular day we organise something around them. I don't only eat chocolate on Easter any more than I only give Will a little gift on Valentine's Day. But you have to have 'a day' to make it special. You can't go organising picnics and buying flowers every day.

That's why we need one special day where we do something extra special, something above and beyond what we normally do to express our love. To all those Valentine's Day Scrooges who think it's just commercial bullshit, I challenge you to find a way to express your love on that day without buying anything. It's the sentiment, not the expenditure that counts.

Ceasarian v Nasty Natural

From the number of enquiries I've received it seems it's not only me wondering about this one. Which is worse, a natural birth gone wrong or a Cesarean perfectly executed?

Going into the Caesar I didn't think the recovery could be worse than my recovery from Euey's birth. When I was told I'd had a 4th degree tear after Euey's birth my first question to the doctor was 'How many degrees are there?'. I wasn't all that pleased to learn there are 4 degrees of tear and 4th is the worst. It is a tear from A to V. So it's pretty understandable that I thought 'major abdominal surgery' (as the midwives kept putting it) would be a breeze. It aint! As far as I can see, they are both bad, the difference is in the timing and the activities.

The Caesar was the worst for the first 2 days. I couldn't get out of bed for a day, then day 2 the move from the bed to the shower nearly killed me. Even by day 5, when I went home, it wasn't looking so good - the walk from hospital room to car made me realise that all the 'walking around' I'd been doing in my little hospital room didn't cut it in the real world. Now, a week later, I'm doing okay. I can get out of bed without screaming on the inside and my meds are purely over the counter.

The tear was bad too, but for the first 2 days they had me on a morphine drip! After that I was on Panadene Forte for about a week, and my god did it hurt to walk and pee. I had to sit on a cushion with a hole in it for at least 2 weeks. It ached to walk for months.

I think this time I will be mobile, in terms of walking, much sooner than with Euey. It is the other activities that are a problem. I'm only just beginning to understand that the tummy muscles I thought didn't exist actually get used an awful lot. Pushing, lifting and sitting up out of bed all won't be easy for awhile.

So which would I prefer? Neither of course! Ideally, if there is a next time, I'd love a natural birth with as little intervention as possible. But considering the first two, that's highly unlikely. I guess it comes down to this:
I elected for a Caesar this time because there was a high likelihood I would tear again and then be incontinent. If that risk still stands 'next time' then I will elect for Caesar again. It doesn't matter what the recovery time is - wearing nappies* is not a risk I'm willing to take!

* that's diapers for my Nth American readers :)

Not wondering much ...

The only thing I'm wondering at the moment is whether I can actually cope with having two kids. Considering the imminent arrival of Dot (tomorrow) and the method of that arrival (Caesar) I fear it may be awhile before I'm actually thinking or wondering much.

It is not a myth that your brain turns to mush when you're pregnant and raising small children. And it is not simply because you're so busy running around making sandwiches and breast feeding that you have no time to think. I have discovered that when I actually find time I still cannot make my brain work to the same capacity as it used to.

I'm sure my legal text books are harder to understand than they should be. I can't do simple math and find myself not even trying. I go to parties (not all that often!) and bore myself silly because I can't make interesting conversation. I am often just happy to sit without thinking. Just sit, nothing else. My mind completely blank. I find this odd. Having the ability to just sit and think nothing is still not something I'm used to being able to do, let alone actively wanting to do.

My mother tells me that you get your brain back when your last child is about 3. If we have a third (and that will be the last) then by my reckoning that means I will be able to post on Thoughts and Wonderings towards the end of 2011.

See you then.