I just can't see it making the home reader list

As I write this I am sipping at a mug of "tea" which is simultaneously disgusting and soothing. It tastes like the black scum that gathers in the tiles under the shower screen, with a nice little lemony aftertaste.

Earlier this evening C and I prepared a hearty and warming soup for dinner. This entailed lots of ginger, lots of garlic and an organic chicken with its arse packed full of "herbs". These herbs looked like a selection of half dried berries, some form of dessicated peel, some twig type vegetation, a large turd and the ubquitous shavings of old foam surfboard.

These two incidents are indeed related.

Me, and the Chinese Fertility Goddess are on again.

This morning, after a brief spate of school girl like giggling on both sides, it was as if no time at all had passed since my last visit. Except it had of course, I had a beautiful toddler to prove it and then there was the...

Your book! You wrote a book!

Yes, I said, I did. Um...have you seen it?

I got your book! I bought it! Not finish reading it yet. My daughter reads it, she loves it, she laughs, says you are such a funny lady.

Mmm, yes, I said. Thankyou.

And, the Chinese Fertility Goddess giggled again, so many women come in to see me and they have your book! And they say...this Chinese Fertility Goddess, I think this might be you!

And it is, I say.

We laugh about this and she hugs me and I show her a picture of Tricky I have bought specially for her and also the copy of the book that I will sign for her. I tell her about living in The Country last year and the new tv writing gig and I refrain from asking her how many celebrities she's knocked up since I was there last.

She rushes me into the acupuncture room, so many needles, so little time.

I'm glad your daughter is enjoying the book, I say.

Yes yes, the Chinese Fertility Goddess pauses to wrap a blanket carefully around my legs.
My daughter is seven. You think it's ok for her to read?

Um...

I rack my brains to recall all the completely inappropriate bits for seven year olds. Several immediately come to mind.

There's a little bit of swearing, I say.

She looks at me... there's sex isn't there?

Yyyyes, I say...but I guess she knows what it is you do...?

The CFG nods and waves this aside and briskly finishes tucking me in. You rest now, sleep. Later make chicken soup with my soup herbs, drink H tea. Tomorrow, after transfer, you come back, come straight upstairs, I do acupuncture then you go home. And for two weeks, you rest. No cleaning. None. Leave it. Tell C I say: You Are Not To Clean.

Ok, I shrug.

And with that she bustles out the door. And I smile.

It's good to be back.

All Being Well: Lots More Prodding

News Flash to braindead parents at Daylight Savings changeover….feeding your child an hour earlier (ie at their pre-DS eating time) ACTUALLY WORKS.

Tricky was a dream, nay a cherub, nay a fully fledged angel of the lord with floaty frock and feathers. Having been a screaming, back arching, food throwing monster of the deep the day before, he was suddenly a miniature Noel Coward, all witty repartee and delightful table manners. The booster seat is at the ready but we’re holding off for the moment.

My youngest sister K is pregnant. Almost 12 weeks in fact. She was one of those I’m going off the pill now, whoopsie! women. She would be one of those women I couldn’t help hating except that she’s my baby sister and she also spent most of this trimester with her head in a bucket. She told us, her family, when she was about three weeks and when I started to speak all that All Being Well stuff she hushed me and said: I started saying that but now I’ve stopped because I believe it will all be well and I want to just enjoy the pregnancy.

I was stunned at her blind optimism but also jealous and then also kind of proud of her attitude, because, why shouldn’t a healthy young woman believe that her pregnancy will end happily? Isn’t that one of the things IF steals from you? Faith? Optimism? Belief in a happy ending?

I hushed up and instead packed a bag of books for her. I’ve got a great one that AJ sent me about Spiritual Midwifery, I told her and also a couple of books about nutrition in pregnancy. Yes, yes, she said, bring all that. But what I really need is a book of baby names.

I hugged her.

Other news: The House Of Groovy Love rang to let me know that All Being Well, the transfer will happen on Tuesday! This Tuesday! As in the 15th!! Because my girly insides are giddy and impatient like unbroken colts before Almanzo Wilder lays his strong experienced hands upon them and have thusly jumped the estrogen fence. Big Fatty Dominant Follicle had grown to the size of a small helicopter by the last date with the Dildo-Cam which sort of hinted gently that the surge was in sight.

My Whockety! It all seems to have crept up so soon. I have rung and made an appointment to see the Chinese Fertility Goddess on Monday for acupuncture, which will be weird because I haven’t seen her since my last transfer over two years ago. I didn’t even send her one of those thankyou cards with a picture of my baby on it because…well I don’t know, it was all too much, the whole sending out pictures with my baby on it. I was so sore I could barely sit down for weeks and so constipated the last thing on my mind was a little letter writing so of course now I’m stricken with worry that she’ll think I’m rude and obnoxious and don’t deserve to have a second baby. In the highly unlikely event that she will actually be as lovely and sweet and as positive as I remember her being, I shall also see her on Squirty Up The Clacker Day for post transfer needles.

Tonight, I start on those silver bullets of waxy progesterone goodness: the pessaries. They’re small, they’re handmade, they’re individually wrapped in silver paper and stored in a lovely old fashioned dark glass jar. I could only love them more if they were tiny dark chocolate truffles but then I wouldn’t be sliding them up my hoohah and waving my legs in the air for an hour.

Everyone's a critic

Tricky is having some whopping great dinner tanties of late.

Last night for instance. We had the whole screaming, arching, fling your bowl off the highchair extravaganza.

When I took him out of the high chair to attempt to calm him down he shouted angrily that he wanted to sit in the big chair, which meant on my lap perched on a stool, and plucking small pieces of food from my plate. Some of these were hot! and so I had to blow on them first.

When I tried to slide him back into the high chair there was more screaming arching flinging, mix and repeat ad nauseum or until Mummy's small intestine dives up through her throat and hogties her windpipe in a mercy killing attempt.

We think it's the daylight savings; dinner is effectively an hour later and he's never been good at waiting for food. C's the same when his blood sugar levels drop, except he doesn't demand to sit on my lap (now if it it had been in our courting days...) and of course there's the three day a week childcare business and his resulting desparate need for attention, and almost definitely just our crap parenting style in general.

It's not going down well with my early morning dashes across the city to get bled and dildocammed in our attempts to defrost the last of the famous five. This morning I was back again, for both delights, only this time the capricious Sydney traffic decreed I should be ten minutes early and actually have time to mooch about on the street and wish I'd remembered to bring my latest literary adventure "The Long Winter" (Laura Ingalls, also doing battle with various frozen items, such as the livestock, the water pump and her hoity toity blind sister Mary).

So tonight we're dining early, ala pensioner hour, and hopefully food will actually make its
proper journey down his gullet, instead of across the floor.

And I won't be following through on those muttered threats last night to send him back to the freezer he came from.

Reuniting Cause It Feels Soooo Gooooood

Dear Dildo-Cam!


Well hello!
Look at you!
No you!
You with your tight fitting condom cover and your Helpful Assistant with her tousled hair and tra la la accent.
You with your big screen and your floral modesty sheets!

You know when I turned up to see you today, I didn’t know really what to expect. It’s been over two years, two long years, since our last encounter. This being my first day back on the job so to speak I wanted to make a good impression, but then, people in hell want iced water.

Last night I lay tossing and turning, worrying myself sick over the best and most direct route to the House Of Groovy Love.

I’m not a great driver Dildo-Cam, I’m a very average navigator and I’m a worse parker. Put these three things together and you may as well just call me shithouse, but I console myself with my myriad of other skills. Recalling obscure songs from my childhood for instance. Not too many people can pluck the university song of their visiting American third grade teacher off the top of their heads, yet nearly everyone can execute a reverse park, even if it is on the other side of the road on a one way street and it’s raining. Yet sadly it’s this second, more common, skill that seems to hold so much more value in our car crazy society.

But I digress! It was 40 minutes into my early morning 15 minute journey and I had only managed to park the car! I ran, breathless into the lifts, forgetting of course which floor I needed, only to realize that a lift full of women with anxious faces at 7 in the morning was only ever going to get out at one floor.

The newly spacious and smartened up House Of Groovy Love has many changes!

Instead of the typical “waiting room” configuration of chairs, to cushion the butts of we the infertile, and direct our anxious gazes at anywhere else but each other’s faces, there is now a multiple “circle the wagons” type approach. This makes avoiding eye contact that much more difficult but cherry picking magazines a breeze.

Some things stay the same!

I forgot that when you arrive at the House Of Groovy Love, the very first thing to do, before saying hi to the door bitch or taking off your coat or picking your wagon is to Write Down Your Name and then tick Bloods U/S or BOTH.

Hovering, even digging in your bag for a pen, is enough time for someone else to nip in and scribble down their name before yours and then opening your mouth to take a breath and say “whoa now, missy, settle back there,” means five more folk with firmly pressed lips and biros outstretched will duck in under your elbow and scribble their names down and suddenly a three minute bloodletting stretches out to a twenty minute wait and a close reading of why a minimally decorated room should be painted with eggshell or weak weak latte rather than white. (Makes it look like a gallery).

However, this didn’t happen to me because this is my Second Time Around and so, despite a momentary lapse of brain, I was one of the loathsome nippers. Yes, me, who drove around and around the Sydney cbd and its teeth grindingly hideous one way streets like a lumbering half blind elephant was suddenly Penelope Pitstop at the front desk.

Blood test? Jolly! I remember that big pillow they give you to cuddle, and the garish arm bands! I remember the tiny prick and the bit of cotton wool that gets taped to your arm, effectively in my case, hopelessly ineffective in the girl after me who was awash with blood by the time we caught up in the Ultrasound Lounge!

Your Helpful Assistant demurely ducked out of the room saying she’d “leave me to change” and I had to call her back because I had forgotten what to take off.
Completely blank! Nerves, or what!

She suggested… Undies! Yes, and trousers too, and then I was able to remember Shoes all by myself, but was that all? Strange, when I think back to that moment I didn’t have a lot more to remove, my top, but no bra because I didn’t want to disturb Tricky by scavenging around the bedroom, and a poncho.

Perhaps subconsciously I just wanted to wear the poncho for our reunion. Helpful Assistant kindly set me straight. She offered me the chance to handle you myself Dildo-Cam, but this made me laugh merrily and so she shoved you in herself and told me to concentrate on my breathing.

And very soon I was able to see my ovaries again! Unpredictable, unreliable funny old things that they are! One had a Big Fat follicle and two smaller hangers on! The other had five miniscule useless excuses for follicles! Oh the joys of seeing things in your body that no one should ever need to see! And all due to you Dildo-Cam. You!

A few hours later, Butterfly from the House Of Groovy Love rang to tell me that Dr Lovely Accent had decreed another blood test on the morrow. Perhaps due to global warming I seem to be a little high on the estrogen. Big Fatty in the left ovary has some ‘splainin’ to do.

Anyway. After the stressful night, drive, park and dash, I must say that the chance to lie down and put my feet up while you popped on the Barry White and we got reacquainted was probably the most pleasant part of the journey so far. If only he had that album of childhood melodies down...

Minnesota, hats off to thee….

Let’s hope it continues that way hey?


Love, in a platonic fashion

OvaGirl
xxx

Mother's Day

Friday the 4th of April was the anniversary of my mother's death.

14 years ago.
The year I left my then husband. The year I met my now husband.
A lifetime ago.

In previous years I have marked the occasion with a special dinner with my sisters, or an hour meditating under a tree in the botanic gardens. This year I chose to do something different and had a huge fight with C because he stayed out til 3 in the morning the night before celebrating a co-worker's award.

While C slunk off back to bed with his hangover, I took our child to the museum (his first time) and looked at dinosaurs. Then I decided to join the museum which meant my entry fee was refunded. At first I asked for just a Single membership but when they took me to the membership office, none of the right people were about so I was asked to drop in later.

And if you don't get the time to do that, said the friendly staff member, just think of this as a free trip to the museum. It seemed a very nice and generous thing to do which made me feel a teeny bit better about the way the day had gone.

This also gave me time to reflect a little, and to play magnetic fishing with Tricky in the Under-Fives section, and peruse many tiny thin bones and skeletons in the over fives section. I was able to send sad text messages to my sisters re the day, and a slightly terse text message to C re the day (I knew he had forgotten).

Before going home I went back to the membership office. And when they asked me what sort of membership I thought that C would love to come back to the museum with both of us and so I said Family. Which meant I must have forgiven him, somewhere between the fossilized shells and the green tea in the cafe.

They took my details and siphoned off my credit card and gave Tricky a plastic T-Rex head, featuring a mouth that opens to reveal many many teeth, on a sort of handle thing.

Sadly he was unable to operate it but he was able to hold up the head and nibble thoughtfully at the brows.

It was that sort of day.

Third Week. Day Two.

Yesterday, it was C's turn to take Tricky in to homecare while I walked the Naughty Nephews over to their school. When I met C in the laneway outside the carer's house he was wiping the tears from under his sunglasses.


We scurried away together, feeling awful; he looked at me with a pleading look, C said in a trembling voice. I knew what he meant. It was the third week of pleading looks and accusing stares and screaming tomato and while the first week was ok, the second week (while C was away) had been, well, trying.


He stops pretty quickly, I assured him. If we'd waited at the gate we would have heard.


We got in the car, both feeling odd, as if we were fourteen again and truanting school or something.


We were scurrying because we were going to see a play at the Opera House, a play that started at 10 am. It was about two kids and a baby whose mother leaves them in their car at a supermarket carpark. At the end of the play I turned to the director who had invited us and grabbed her hand. That was amazing I said. At least that was what I meant to say. Instead I said That was ammmaaaahooooaa and bawled my eyes out. She hugged me. I think she thought that was quite a good review. Even for me, it was fairly impressive weeping.


Later C and I continued the wierd truanting feeling by having lunch together at a cafe where prams would be difficult and baked beans and banana bread were absent from the menu. It was an odd sensation, liberating yet missing something. He'll be having his hot lunch now, we said to each other over the chilli linguini. And later...I bet he's having his nap now.


At home I dug through the papers that had lain untouched for the past 28 days. I rang the phone number and a friendly voice chimed at the other end... House Of Groovy Love (not the clinic's actual name) Rainbow speaking (not the fertility sister's actual name), how can I help you?


Hi I said. It's day 2 and I want to activate my Frozen Embryo Cycle.

Okay, she said happily. Then you'll be coming in next tuesday for your blood test and ultra sound. I felt slightly dizzy writing these words into my diary.

What day will the transfer happen, I said...just, you know, if All Goes Well and it actually does happen.

Ah, she said. Probably on the following Friday.

I wrote this in too. The wierd feelings continued.


That play today, I said to C as I sipped at my decaf. I had a pretty strong reaction to it. I mean I thought it was good but, you know, it's been a long time since I did that in a theatre.


It's because we're parents, he said.


Friday. April 18th.


If All Goes Well.

One bright morning

Last week the unthinkable happened.

Fifteen minutes before it was time to take Tricky to homecare he insisted on me picking him up so he could rest his head upon my shoulder. Three seconds later he threw up his porridge and milk all over my back.

I turned him around and he continued to vomit in great Exorcist like streams over both of us. We were far enough away from the couch and the desks and it seemed pointless to move anywhere until he was finished so I just watched as he sprayed the floor, my jeans and Spot Goes To The Park with fragrant white chunks.

That left me with ten minutes to completely change both of us, brush his teeth and sponge the vomit off the floor. I felt slightly nostalgic as I swapped away with the paper towels. Tricky's not a big spewer as a toddler so I couldn't help but think back to those early breastfeeding days of "possetting" and too much jiggling in the air.

Sadly, Spot was stuffed.

Tricky seemed quite cheerful and even complained of being hungry once he was finished, which was a relief because my big fear was that he would otherwise be deemed too sick for homecare. I didn’t feel brave enough to lie to his carer and anyway there was a slight acrid smell hanging around his little body, probably because when I took off his tee shirt I inadvertently rubbed vomit through his hair. I tried to comb it out as best I could and then I put his hat over the top. By the time she took it off, I reasoned, I would be long gone.

As we prepared to rush out the door I realised I could still smell vomit, was it in my hair too? After all, he had been resting his head on my shoulder when he started.

No, my hair seemed fine. Not washed or in any way groomed of course but adequate for dropping off baby and also Naughty Nephews at school opposite. I know not what possessed me but some sixth sense made me feel the back of my neck which is when I discovered the semi hardened oat and sour milk crust. Thus I was able to happily walk the nephews through their school, secure in the knowledge that other parents wouldn't think I had misplaced my facepack.

As it turned out, Tricky was fine, the carer was unphased and even gave him food throughout the day which all stayed down.

And because I suspected the place would stink of spew when I got home and put me off having breakfast, I took myself to a cafe instead and had some very nice mushrooms and spinach on toast. For some reason though, I couldn't bring myself to eat the parmesan cheese.

Quite a good morning really.

Letter To A 20 Month Old Adventurer

My darling Tricky

This month’s Big Event is the entrance of childcare.

It happened on the day you turned 20 months. This coincided with the entrance of the new job and the exit of my last vestiges of sanity. Prior to this moment I had become the archetypal feminist cartoon cliché: trying to conduct phone calls to script producers with you hanging like a dead weight from my trouser legs. Or sitting down to type only to have your chubby hands creeping over the laptop keys and attempting to activate Hooray For Fish or Wigglemania.
Sitting on the couch to research, say, the advent of terrorism in South East Asia or the firing range of the crossbow (again with the crossbow) became an exercise in negotiation: one chapter on Jema*h Islamiah for a spirited rendition of Green Eggs And H*m, three news articles on various arrow related homicides for every Mr Man book we own.

(That’s Mr Bump, Mr Happy, Mr Sneeze, Mr Tickle, Mr Grumpy and Mr Ask Your Sodding Father. )

But then, like a feather on the breath of God, an ad for a vacancy in a home childcare place came up, via your Aunty N and her multitude of child related contacts, and so we called, we visited, we loved the mature, maternal calming energy of the carer, AND THEN WE LEFT YOU.

It wasn’t intentional, we hadn’t planned to start the childcare thing right then and there. But you were playing so happily with the spiral ball tower and climbing on the moulded plastic slide with the rounded edges and the soft faux-grass landing pad and then the carer, R , casually mentioned that we could start that very day if we wanted to and I started to say no no, we’ll start tomorrow but the words disappeared from my mouth and I just gulped and said ok.

Your father and I kissed you goodbye and you seemed almost annoyed that we disturbed your intense posting of balls into spiral towers. You didn’t even look at us, just presented your face to be kissed and got back to it. Bye bye we said. See you soon. Then we walked out of the gate and I took two steps and dissolved into tears (but silent tears because I didn’t want you to hear me cry). And I wept all the way to the car and all the way to the café where C took me (who was also sad but, you know, not in a waterfall of snot and tears kind of way) and then I saw that the chocolate croissants were very fine looking indeed and so I stopped crying and just felt sad inside.

Your waking hours are coming unstuck and I think this is as a direct result of the change in your life, regular 6.30 starts have become horrifying 5.30 ones, but as my friend H with her poor sleep addled two and a half year old said grimly to me: Welcome to my world.

Can I tell you, without a hint of exaggeration, that you are becoming a million times more adorable as each day goes by. Your little grins, your chitter chat in the back of the car, your grave attempts to sing along with the Wiggles, your current deep love for bellybuttons. Anybody’s. Any time.

Your father has taken you to the beach several afternoons and brings you home wrapped in a hooded towel looking like some sort of druid, albeit a tiny one who worships dolphins and also rockpools but abhors clumps of seaweed as the mark of evil.

And your cuddles are real cuddles, and your kisses are wet slops on our cheeks with the accompanying mah! sound and your smiles, especially when you run towards us crying Mummy or Daddy with your arms open wide, make our hearts nearly burst with joy.

That first day at your new childcare went beautifully and when we picked you up in the afternoon you were so happy to see us.

And then the next morning your father took you back to R’s and you were happy once again to play with the spiral ball tower but only if you could see your father out of the corner of your eye. And when he’d finished chatting to R and all the other parents and said “alright Tricky, it’s time for me to go,” you dropped the ball and grabbed his hand and said brightly to R: “Bye bye.”

“Oh dear,” said your father. “No, I’m saying bye bye and you’re staying here.”

Bye bye Daddy. Hello Screaming Tomato.

C could hear you scream almost back to the car. I am very glad that at that moment I was at home tippy tapping on the computer and I suspect that right then and there may have been C’s snot and tear moment.

When he got home he rang R to see how you were and lo, you were fine. R gave you half a banana and the tears stopped at once. She noted that you “respond well to food.” Just like your mother.

And the third day shone bright and fair and your father took you to R’s again and your screams followed him back down the street and again half a banana did the trick and so begins this new phase of life.

It’s scary and confronting and exhilarating and that’s just for your parents. For you, there is a whole new world, away from us, one that can only be described or reported to us, one that we won’t share.

And as time goes on, that world will get bigger, with kindy and school and friends. And puberty and adulthood.

And the world that was once all our world, you, me, your father; our solid little world of three, of milk and sleep and songs and stories, will shrink and become smaller and smaller and eventually be gone. And while I'm excited about everything else, that realisation makes me sad inside.

And no pastries or half bananas can change that.


love love love

Your very own
OvaGirl
xxxxxx

all this and more

Sydney is particularly beautiful at the change of season and, despite climate change and still cheering government change and not forgetting the spare change I gave to the man with no fingers playing a harmonica in the middle of the footpath, this morning was no exception.

I am in a strange place right now; Tricky getting older and more independent and, well, tricky (but in a good way) and last week the getting of a new job (or jobette as I think of them because being a feckless artiste one rarely gets a proper long term job) and somewhere floating in the back of my mind a wee frozen speck of life waiting for C and I to give the word for the Great Defrosting.

Dr Lovely Accent said that when I was ready I should just call the House Of Groovy IVF Love and activate my cycle. In my mind I envisage a posse of sleeper fertility sisters, syringes poised, reclining in a semi darkened room waiting for the red light to flash. But the truth is, I could have activated them on that day. Instead I told Dr Lovely Accent that it was too soon, that I’d have to wait and check my diary etc and then we could decide. I expect he thought I was a dickhead but he said that was fine and to let him know.

Check my diary? For god’s sake. Why not order hair colour and shoe size while I was at it.

The thing is, it’s not the diary that’s ill prepared for this, it’s me. I want to have another baby and I want that frozen embryo to be it but at the same time I’m only now starting to feel like my body has come back to me, my mind is firming up again. We sleep more. Tricky wakes anytime from 6am (and, very rarely, earlier) and it’s all go from then but he’s usually asleep from 7.30 pm. It’s working. There’s a system. And now I’m about to go and fuck with the system. But this year I turn 40. And if frozen embryo turns up its frozen cells that will be toes and we go for another egg retrieval then… well...time’s ticking. Is all's I'm saying.

One of the outcomes of this jobette is that some sort of consistent childcare for Tricky has become imperative. At the moment we get by with a sort of half and half approach, both C and I are working from home at the moment (but C will be back working in the country after Easter) and we’ve been able to juggle meetings, reports, scripts and budgets around Tricky’s needs. But it’s not going to be enough. And apparently quality childcare isn’t sitting your toddler in front of the spare laptop to watch endless reruns of Hairy McClary on dvd. Who then, and where and how much?

So, all this and more swirling through my mind when we took Tricky out this morning, both of us because C’s just rooted his back and can’t pick Tricky up at the moment. We grabbed a couple of coffees (yes, even me, evil temptation that is caffeine) and pastries and strolled to an inner-city park so that Tricky could expend some energy on the swings and slides.

We had to make do with the swings, at least for a while, because a couple of junkies-in-love were entwined below the slippery dip, shooting up and scratching at each other’s back. This made me cross at first but then I thought, well, if I wanted to shoot up smack maybe I’d sit there too. It was a very pleasant spot with the trees gently swaying and the traffic humming past. Even the pigeons were an attractive white or speckly colour, not the usual rat grey. As I pushed Tricky I watched them, junkies not pigeons, hoping they would go soon. Both guy and girl were wearing neat white socks and tennis shoes, I noticed.

The script producer rang at this moment so I swapped with C and he took over swing pushing and junkie watching and I discussed crossbow homicides and Final Draft. Another toddler, and mother, appeared while I was talking. They had no problem climbing onto the slide above the junkies.

They must be from around here, I thought.

As I finished the call, both toddlers were now stomping and laughing on the slides and ramps. Quite calmly the junkies-in-love gathered together their bits and bobs in a bit of newspaper and meandered out from under the slide.

We should just check they haven’t left a needle under there, the other mother said quietly and I bent and looked under – all clean.

I straightened up and watched the junkies drifting down the lane, the guy stopping to drop his newspaper and contents neatly in a bin.

And Tricky laughed and C held his back and groaned a little and I wondered how long it would take to install Final Draft and the Other Mother talked about her local childcare centre and time ticked on.

And somewhere in the city a speck of frozen life lay waiting.

And it was still a beautiful morning.

But I love him

What is this?

C is staring at something in his hand.

It’s the box the baby Panadol comes in, I say.

On the front of the box is a picture of a small child, a toddler in fact, dressed in an echidna costume, curled up asleep. This is just one of a number of products they make featuring pictures of children dressed as native Australian animals. Cute? You could roast them on an Aussie bbq with a couple of prawns and have them all on toast.

C looks carefully at the box again, deeply concerned.

Why I say, what do you think it is?

It’s…well it’s obviously a child, he says. But it looks like it’s been… wrapped in the body of some sort of dead animal.

Does it now? I ask, fascinated, as ever, at the inner workings of my husband's mind. What sort of animal?

Well, he says… it could be… an echidna.
Mmm…. I say.
But, also, I think it could be the body of a pig.

It’s ok, I say. It is an echidna.

We have a little laugh and then I say: I can’t believe you thought it was a pig.

Yeah, right, he says. And then, seriously: But why is a child wrapped in the body of an echidna?

Three Little Pricks

Tricky had his final two vaccinations the other day.

I'd like to say it all went smoothly and calmly, but then I'd also like to say there's peace all over the world and global warming has been reversed.

IT WAS TWO HOURS OF HELL.

Hell with extra screaming. Screaming like I have never heard before. I am talking way beyond Screaming Tomato. Screaming Tomato only applied when he couldn't actually thrash his Ridiculously Heavy Body from side to side or fling himself backwards out of my arms and certainly not when he could stiffen himself into a concrete garden gnome making it impossible to strap him into his straitjacket, I mean stroller.

AND ALL THIS HAPPENED IN THE WAITING ROOM.

We weren't even in Dr Jab's room yet. But with those high decibel shrieks and that alarming convulsive thrashing over the carpet we were hustled in very quickly. And not surprisingly the actual injections made no difference to the quality of the screaming. They continued. As did the thrashing and garden gnome impressions.

And of course the reception staff couldn't wait to throw us out onto the street.

So now there's me lugging an enormous baby bag, my handbag, a completely useless stroller and an insanely screaming toddler who's almost frothing at the mouth by this stage. I couldn't even put him down to load all the bags into the stroller.

As I stood there helplessly on the footpath, cursing C for having brought Tricky home late from the beach therefore he went down late for his nap therefore he was wrenched from his sleep early to make the doctor's appointment therefore he had transformed into evil monster baby and I had lost at least ten years off my life expectancy, a vision suddenly appeared before me.

She was thin. She was beautiful. She too had known the horrors of trying to manhandle an unwieldy toddler. Elizabeth Hurley gazed at me with her sympathetic come-hither eyes and brandished her Magnum.

Yes, I thought to myself. What else will shut him up and cool him down at the same time?

I pushed past the Liz cutout and into the seven 11, snatched up a little tub of vanilla icecream and paid with shaking hands.

Do you have a spoon? I asked the man behind the counter. He frowned a little but eventually managed to come up with a paddlepop stick.

Through all this Tricky kept screaming and thrashing and finally it was all I could do to sink to the linoleum in front of the ready made ham sandwiches and start shovelling the ice cream in. And miraculously it worked but only while the icecream was in his mouth. If I dared to stop and say, gather my bags together, or move the stroller out of the way of the English backpackers humming and ha-ing over which ham sandwich they should buy, then the screaming would start again.

At one point I thought to myself that the only other person I knew who had spent as much time on the floor as this was my friend George who went down to his local seven 11 to get some milk and ended up in an armed robbery.

The other prick of the week was yesterday when I went in to have a blood test for... well for all that shit you have to have when you're going to start IVF again.

Yes...we've got the fairy floss, we bought the Cheese On A Stick, we're clutching our tickets in our hot little hands. Back on the Great Big Fertility Ride we go.

It's not the same of course, different doctors for starters. We're going with Dr Lovely Accent who did the successful transfer that led to Tricky. And, at this point anyway, it looks like we won't be using the Chinese Fertility Goddess with her myriad of ghastly teas, because well basically we can't afford her. But I am off the coffee. And the wine. Almost.

We're starting with a frozen cycle, the last of our Famous Five who's been in the deep freeze for over two years. No drugs for this cycle just the usual dates with the dildocam and blood tests akimbo.

And if that fails, well we'll see.

Back on the floor of the seven 11, finally, the tub was empty, Tricky had gone for several minutes without shrieking and the red shine to his face had begun to subside.

Now was the part I feared, the sliding him back into the stroller. The English backpackers had stopped to watch, the man behind the counter had stopped to watch, and Tricky was sucking the last vestiges of icecream from his stick. Quickly I picked him up and threw him into the stroller, strapping him in even as he opened his mouth to roar.

Too late buddy, I said grimly as I loaded the bags on behind, you're in.

And off we strolled home, him shouting and kicking the whole way.

Number two? Bring it on.

Exciting parent/child tug of war now with recognisable word!

Domestic incident reported at House of OvaGirl, 1400 hours. Perpetrator is a small brown toddler with extremely cute nose. Incident took the form of an argument between SBT and mother. Mother’s statement follows:

"We had such a good morning, he ate biscuits, toast and avocado and he picked up handfuls of pebbles and threw them onto the courtyard where other customers were eating. And then he played with Claudia on the swings and with George on the slippery dip. And then we came home and he had a sleep and when he woke up the trouble started.

I asked if he wanted his lunch and he seemed agreeable to the idea and then I suggested he might like a sandwich and he said Beans.

I said no, not beans, we had baked beans yesterday and I think it would be best to have a sandwich, or if not possibly some scrambled eggs.

He said Beans, again, immediately, and I felt, well to be honest, threatened. It wasn’t what he said, it was the tone he used. So I just said Sandwich, you know, to call his bluff, and he said straightaway Beans! and this time there was definitely a threatening tone and I got annoyed and I said Sandwich! just that bit louder and he yelled BEANS!

And now he sort of stamped his feet and I said Sandwich!

And he shouted BEANS about three times, BEANS BEANS BEANS and then he rolled about on the floor and screamed and his face turned red and I said calmly that he better watch out because if the wind changes his face would stay like that and he just screamed BEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAANS! BEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAANNS!

No I didn’t respond to this, I don’t think it’s helpful. I mean, I'm the adult here, not him, I'm the one with the control in this situation. I just let him scream away and very calmly and firmly got his lunch ready.

And I think all that rolling and shouting really worked up an appetite because he sat properly in his chair and ate quite nicely and obviously enjoyed his baked beans very much."

Granny A and Granny P

Tricky and I have scooted up to Newcastle. We are hanging out at my parents' place for a few days while C is in Adelaide. Tricky is of course delighted with the huge doses of Aphwa ('granny' in Burmese) that he is getting each day. Poor Poppy, his grandfather, and I are but second class citizens beside her fabulousness. Honestly though, I do feel Tricky's Great Love is getting a bit out of hand when I, his mother, am in the middle of reading him a story and the sound of Aphwah's key in the door has him launch himself from my lap. He stops only to to snatch the book from my hand and carry it out like an offering, along with a huge smarmy smile, whilst calling Apwa Readdis Readdis... as if he has been starved of all entertainment and made to amuse himself all day with a chairleg and two rubber bands. (Although actually I reckon we could get a good half hour out of those rubber bands.)

But in the meantime, another Granny, the marvellous Granny P of Rockpool In My Kitchen, who is also Penelope Farmer author of Charlotte Sometimes and many other wonderful books for kids and grownups, has written a review of my book Legs Up & Laughing.
You can read it here.

Letter To A 19 Month Old Delinquent

Darling Tricky

Good God, you’re 19 months all of a sudden!

Just like one day you will be 19 years and I shall be equally amazed and horrified. When I started to write this you were arguing with me about having a nap.

Are you tired, I asked hopefully.
Nahhh, you drawled back, like the delinquent you will no doubt turn out to be.
Yes, you are, I insisted, I am the Mum and I know.
Bonta! you replied in a jubilant tone that I found inappropriate under the circumstances and then you cunningly tried to change the subject by shouting Brrrrm! and driving your little red car away.
Cah! you called back over your shoulder just to add insult to injury.

This entire scene will be no doubt replayed 18 years hence, albeit with some slight word changes. I shall watch you speeding off down the street in your clapped out 2000 Holden having shouted obscenities at me and I shall have to ease the pain by recalling you now, when you were short and cute, you enjoyed dancing to your battery operated turtle and you thought flowers were the most awesome things on this earth.

We are still a few months off the “Terrible Twos” and indeed my mother-in-law told me that in her day, there were no terrible twos, twos were lovely, it was the Terrible Threes that everyone was terrified about.

I wouldn’t dream of saying that you were “terrible” just as I could not honestly say you were “two” but the word tyrant has been bandied about of late.

Is it the way you firmly take the hand of your nearest willing slave and drag them over to whichever item you wish them to pick up, read, or feed to you?

Is it the way you express your displeasure by dropping to all fours, shouting lustily and then attempting to bang your teeth against the floorboards? Obviously this just makes us laugh but all the books say that would be the wrong thing to do and so we are forced to snicker into our sleeves.

Also, changeable, what? The other day you decided that you wanted to eat organic apricots. Yes the same organic apricots that previously you had scorned. In truth, the organic apricot is an ugly beast of a dried fruit, resembling a leathery, tightly wrinkled and deeply tanned, testicle.

It’s not the kind of thing you’ll see decorating a pavlova say or garnishing a crème brulee. Even so, I was bemused when you expressed interest in eating the thing but complete horror at touching it with your fingers. Instead you grasped at my wrist forcing me to pick up the loathsome yet tasty morsel and hold it in front of your mouth so that you could bite off small pieces. All attempts to drop it into your hand led to shrieking and flinging of this wretched Quasimodo Raisin across the room. When I refused to feed it to your mouth directly and offered it to you in my hand you preferred to lean over and eat it from my palm like a very very small horse.

You are still having swimming lessons with your Dadda and much excitement came from you blowing bubbles in the ocean baths the other day. You obligingly recreated the moment for me in your own little bath. This was less thrilling since you had also just done a wee in your own little bath water but frankly those ocean baths are not the cleanest either and on some of the hot days we’ve had of late it’s a little like wallowing in a crowded tureen of soup.

I should note that you have also, finally done a poo in the bath, a little milestone I was waiting for you to plop on, thankfully your father was on duty. It was a good lesson learned for Dadda too…note that prolonged farts in conjunction with a studious expression will lead to poo.

You have a slight obsession with mosquitoes and the bites they inflict upon your chubby arms and legs. It’s hideous, they often swell up into big hard lumpy welts. We have some Stop Itch to dab onto these and when I first started to put this on I would say, sympathetically, Naughty Mosquitoes. They bite. You also saw me swatting a couple of the offensive insects and so now you have a whole routine that goes like this: Baht! (point mournfully at red dot on leg) Nottee Skeeto. (Squat down and smack hard at floor in best mosquito crushing impression) Cream! (Take hand of Willing Slave and drag into bathroom where stop itch cream is kept) Repeat for each red spot as appears.

This month also, you changed our names. For months we have been Mumma and Dadda. It is lovely to be called Mumma or Dadda, unless you are like the father of Tricky’s little friend Toby, who was also called Mumma and then, whilst still lovely, it got just that wee bit confusing.

But then, for no reason I can fathom, you started calling us Mummeeee and Daddddeeee, both said in a sort of drawn out, slightly mournful manner. It’s extremely effective at 6.30 in the morning, your preferred waking time for you and us, when you call from the other side of the bookshelves Mummmeee, Daddeeeeee up! Up! Peeeease. And then, if we’re not moving quite fast enough, the stern warning Poo Poo! Poo Poo! The very thought of a leaking nappy and a bed needing a complete stripdown and disinfect has us up bright eyed and bushytailed like no alarm clock can do.

Ah, but it’s lovely. You are such a bright and beautiful child, sweet and happy, slow to cry when you have one of your innumerable bumps and tumbles and oh so quick to laugh. Even your tantrums are not so tantrummy, not just yet, and a raspberry on the tummy is often a quick way to short circuit the Screaming Tomato.

Sometimes I look into your eyes and there are no words at all to describe the feeling that wells up inside me, that peculiar blend of joy and delight and all those secret mother’s fears, those unspoken terrors and worries and general fussings, and love and love and love and love and love.

Although then again, maybe Bonta comes close.


Your Very Own
OvaGirl

xxxxx

History

On Wednesday the Prime Minister made an apology, on behalf of the parliament, to the Australian indigenous population and the Stolen Generation. His speech was screened in various places about the country including Martin Place in Sydney and so we decided to go, with Tricky, because this was, after all, History in the Making.

The night before however was a Screaming Tomato in the making, which led to a sluggish start in the morning. Then, also, it was raining. And peak time.

When the clock struck nine and the apology began we were still struggling through traffic and so, rather than waving a flag in the rain in front of the big screen in Martin Place, we were sitting in the car listening to the radio.

It seems so obvious, an acknowledgement and apology for the terrible things that were done to these Australians as part of government policy, but obviously not to everyone. Not everyone wanted to say sorry, not everyone felt that it was the decent thing to do nor necessary to help heal some of the great tears in our social fabric, the poverty, the alcoholism, the domestic violence. And these things obviously aren’t solved by a little man in spectacles saying “We’re sorry”, but it does acknowledge and regret that for a great many years in this country families were destroyed by our government, thousands of families were torn apart. If so many of these problems are linked to poor self esteem and the dysfunctional family is it any wonder?

Many Aboriginal people wore teeshirts on the day emblazoned with the word "Thanks."
It's a simple word that means so much. Like "Sorry."

As we listened to the Prime Minister talk about the half caste children who were forcibly removed from their mothers, and who, in many cases, never saw those parents again, I glanced in the rear view mirror at my own little brown baby. In one case the parents had dug holes in the riverbank so that when the men arrived in their trucks to round up the children like cattle, they could run and hide in the holes. These children were rounded up anyway, screaming, by the strange men in trucks and the Aboriginal tracker they had brought with them.

The tracker, it turned out, had already apologized to those children many years ago.

The rain had stopped so we walked the rest of the way into the city and looked at the big screen anyway and waved some flags and drank some tea.

And later we took Tricky to see a sculpture that C and I used to pass every time I went to our IVF clinic, the House Of Groovy Love, for a blood test or a date with the dildocam. The sculpture is made up of two enormous white marble pebble type things, cold, smooth and pleasing to the touch. You can slip your way between the two and run around the outside. We used to call them The Giant Ovaries and we liked to touch them for luck. This is the kind of inanely superstitious gesture that we who are desperate to conceive often revert to.

I took his hand and led him up to the sculpture showing him how to stroke the marble, how the stones seem to butt up against each other at first but how in fact you can squeeze your way through to the other side.

And he ran madly about them, shrieking with laughter, hiding between the stones and shouting Boo, making strangers smile fondly and his father and I steal secret looks of joy at each other.

And then, climbing into his parents arms, ready for home.

Two giant ovaries, one giant apology. Big day for a little boy.

Being Prepared

I was a Girl Guide which will be of no surprise to anyone who knows me.

There are photographs existing somewhere of me in my blue blouse and skirt with my beret perched between my two pigtails and a solemn expression on my face.

This was in Penang in the 70s and the air was full of frangipani, satay smoke and the scent of joss sticks but in my private universe I was all about reef knots, square lashing and the trefoil badge. I was placed in the Kookaburra patrol and quite soon (due to the transitory nature of being a RAAF kid posted to Malaysia) I climbed the ranks to become seconder and then Patrol Leader.

Why did I love the Girl Guides?

It wasn't all jolly campfires and chocolate bananas in foil. There were monkey raids on our campsite (scary), and the time I cunningly created kitchen knife holders out of some sort of usefully large unidentified leaves which turned out to be the Malaysian version of Poison Ivy (itchy).

I could bag on about the cameraderie and the community spirit and the being allowed to play with matches but the truth is, I loved the badges best of all. These delightful brightly coloured embroidered discs could be awarded for everything from arts to ...well...crafts.

Yes, things needed to be done for them, basic tasks etc but once they were ticked off the Guide Leader (Monyet or possible Kuching) would send away to Australia and lo they would arrive months later just as you had forgotten you had earned them.

I started with the Hostess Badge (cup of tea, thankyou letter, plate of pikelets) and I never looked back. I also never learned how to properly stitch them onto my uniform and so after the first wash they shrank into thick saggy misshapen blobs dangling from my sleeves by the five or so frankenstein stitches I had managed to perform.

Needless to say, no Sewing Badge for me.

Recently Maggie May (click on the award to find her) awarded me one of these sturdy looking items and I thank her and my parents and the academy and Monyet and Kuching...

It is an E for Excellent award which is tops but even more tops is that I get to pass it on to TEN other blogs in much the same way that I passed on blisteringly itchy palms during that fateful camp.

Here, in no particular order, are my ten. Some are well known, some are not, all are excellent in their own way, for their own reasons.

Some are authors, some are playwrights, some are parents, some are trying to be parents, some are photographers, all are writers and interesting people with interesting points of view.

I hope you enjoy it and please, remember, careful tiny stitches to avoid disappointment.

Triplets or Oh My God We're Outnumbered

Mima at Mima's World

Lin at Dotty Nana

Granny P at Rockpool In The Kitchen

Ms Prufrock

sbs at O, Poor Robinson Crusoe!

Gwen at Gwen's Petty, Judgemental, Evil Thoughts

Caliope at Creating Motherhood

Thalia at Thalia's Fertility Journey

Spanglish at Welcome To The Cysterhood

Peas and Cues

For a few weeks now we have been trying to teach Tricky to say please and thankyou. We feel it helps give his customary barked orders (Wattah! Crackah! Cheeeeese!) a slightly softer feel.

I can now report that our patience was finally rewarded this morning at 5.45 am when we were suddenly woken by the following loud and plaintive wail: Daddeee! Up! Peeeeeeeease....

Shiny Shiny

Tonight my toddler could have drowned in his bath while I was standing not two feet away. I say ‘could’ and then hasten to add ‘but did not’ because I don’t want to incite alarm. Not at this point.

I don’t for one minute believe that I am the only person in the world to take advantage of those blissful times when the non-screaming tomato is happily engaged in drinking out of the tap or sucking the fetid soup from the blowholes of his bath toys. In these moments I have been known to perch daintily on the toilet beside the bath and read, or perhaps, in a spasm of usefulness, sort out the laundry. But I do these things in the bathroom and, as I gently remind my husband when it’s his turn to do the bathing and I catch him in another room sitting at the computer: DROWNING IS A SILENT DEATH.

Tonight however, I realised that despite the close proximity, there was a definite heightening of the risk of Silent Death because while Tricky was splashing about I was cleaning the bathroom sink. I will rephrase that, I was Swish and Swiping, a loathsomely cheerful phrase that really means ‘very quick lazy way of cleaning without proper cleaning’.

Swish and Swiping involves taking 15 minutes to do things like pouring shampoo down the toilet and using your dirty towels to mop the floor and most of all it involves using loads of Windex to clean your glass, mirrors and surfaces, buckets and buckets of the blue stuff. I love it. In just 15 minutes my bathroom appears a model of wholesome cleanliness and I am filled with the joy of domestic smuggery and must fight the urge to lick my own reflection in my crystalline mirrors.

I give credit for all this to the Fly Lady, she of the wacky cleanliness website, she who exhorts us to ‘polish your sink’ and ‘get dressed to shoes’ (FlyLady is not above Swish and Swiping the English language to suit her needs).

I first stumbled onto this site because I was sleep deprived and mush brained and coated in the deitrius of my own filth but too tired to do anything more than gaze sadly about the floor. I needed professional assistance and so I googled something like “MY HOUSE IS FILTHY, HELP” and “I AM TOO TIRED TO NOT LIVE LIKE A PIG.” I was thus led to FlyLady and her crisis cleaning pages. Every now and then I click back when I want more cleanliness inspiration or just to scare myself reading testimonials of how women have turned their homes into the equivalent of a B&B, just for them and their husband, or how much they looove wearing shoes and shining sinks.

The FlyLady site illustration suggests a slightly larger built woman with an unfashionable haircut wearing wings. She may actually be a large swarthy man with a hairy back and a winning way with exclamation marks but her dainty ways and humorous acronyms suggest a fifties housewife with a noughties sympathy for all the poor dirty sluts like myself who need to be reminded of the joys of a sweet smelling toilet and this is why I secretly love her.

Either that or I have become addicted to the smell of Windex.

Mmmm

Something is happening in the Big House right now, something sly, something nasty, something creeping and insidious, something that I expect will eventually leave its foul mark upon us all, all four children and three adults (one having briefly escaped to Europe). And though I choose not to name all those in the Big House that have been currently smitten with this thing I do choose to name this thing and it shall be named Liquid Poo.

Sounds like...

The second most horrible sound in the world is Tricky, post yum cha (or dim sum), shrieking from his cot as he refuses to take his nap. He is the Screaming Tomato but with added dumpling hysteria.

The first most horrible sound in the world is the screaming, as noted above, followed by a sudden thump and then silence.

Somewhere further down the list is the sound of his mother racing up a flight of stairs muttering ‘oh my god’, closely followed by sound of same mother blubbering on the floor as she hugs her slightly surprised but undamaged toddler.

And somewhere near there is the sound of his father who was on the computer in the next room saying pathetically “Oh I thought he was downstairs with you…”

The Crying Room

We go to a funeral.

A father. A grandfather. A husband. A friend.

It rains as we cross the street and enter the church, drizzly and damp but not soaking, and I think maybe I should have watered the garden last night after all.

Tricky squirms and is released early from his stroller but then he starts his vocabulary practice in the middle of the first speech and so C and I take turns holding him in the Crying Room. When it is my turn I think how odd it is that I am watching the flow of all those tears from this side of the glass, the familiar waves of grief washing over the faces of this man’s family and friends.

It is a beautiful service, warm and celebratory, a monument to their love. Photographs flash up on the screen, him as a little curly headed moppet, big eyes and peach face, as a dashing young man with a mischievous gleam in his eye, as a husband with his young pretty wife encircled in his arms, as a father, a grandfather…

...we see him on boats and by water and hear stories of early married life in a boatshed and living on a Chinese junk and stories before that of his father and grandfather and stories of risks and reaching and inspired ideas and beautiful failures. I have only ever known him as an old man in a wheel chair but there he is, dashing and handsome.

A few years ago his wife and I talked about his sickness and its most recent destructive rampage, and I was sorry and said so and she took my hand.

But when I look at him, she said, I still see the man I married.

And we both cried at that, because even love can’t stop this. And now I see him too.

This is not a completely unexpected event, he was eighty years old and had MS for the last twenty years, gradually losing all the strength and mobility we see flashing up on the screen (but never his mind) until in those final days it is his eyebrows that are singled out for their expressive ways.

But he is such a strong presence, a giant on whose shoulders so many people are standing, and such a loved presence, and such a loss, and so when his curly headed moppet of a grandson reads a letter to thank his grandfather for bringing sailing into their family and to tell him he will always think of him when he sails I hug my baby too hard and we both cry.

And because we are human, and funerals are strange reflective events where we can’t help but mirror our own experiences, our own fears of death and loss and our own memories of grief, I think of my mother and her last days.

For outside the world keeps turning and life keeps spinning and the rain keeps falling and time ticks on but in that chair by the bed a whole life can play out in your head from one minute to the next. Hours of silence except for the unsteady rise and fall of their breath are noisy with past conversations, remembered words hashed and squeezed for significance and meaning.

And comfort.

And clear moments, lucid moments, small gestures and statements become polished stones lovingly passed from hand to hand…he said that thing about…she told me about this… she asked Dad if she could just have a tiny smell of his Easter egg and then she bit it!

And we sit in the dark, waiting our turn to say goodbye. The dark of grief and fear and death impending.

But also anger and resentment, not always aimed solely at the disease.
How can you leave us like this? You’re ready but we’re not.

Nursing a loved one to their death is a hard painful journey and I see this reflected on the faces of his family but as prolonged and difficult and heartrending as it is, it is also a bestowal of grace.

And this too shines around them.

A dying person bestows this last precious gift on all those who love him or her. All those who tend, who clean and caress, who lovingly brush their hair or massage their feet or hold their sparrow thin hand in theirs and breathe their air and sigh their name and say over and over in a thousand different ways: I love you.

It is still raining when we leave and C has to get the car for us.

Tricky and I huddle by the steps and I kiss his chubby cheeks and he brushes his eyelashes against mine.

Rain is splashing against the walls and tiny droplets gather on our faces.

Letter To An Eighteen Month Old Fairy Tale

Darling Tricky

Every day more words fall from your mouth. More names, more words for foods you enjoy, activities you prefer, animals and their languges - some of which you have never actually seen except in picture books. The animal noises actually started just a few days ago. I asked you what the Cow said and you told me Moo! and I asked you what the Duck said and you informed me Quack! and I asked you what the Dinosaur says and you revealed it was Rah! and also showed me your teeth.

You like to throw in a few phrases now and then, the Here It Is! And the What Is That? and the Here We Are, possibly just to throw us and make us say..what?! did you hear that? He just said three words together, I heard him!

Meanwhile, your command of the imperative just gets better and better. Up! More! Water! Poo Poo! (actually more a report than a command).

You are like that girl in the Grimms fairy story whose reward for goodness and kindness is to be enchanted so that she drops flowers and precious jewels from her mouth every time she speaks and your father and I follow you around adoringly nudging each other when you Rah and Moo, pushing each other out of the way to lift you Up! or fetch you Water!

We read to you every day and now you also like to “read” to yourself, you turn the pages, point to the pictures, mimic our inflections, repeat the words. I may be deep in some email adventure or half way through writing a scene but I can’t help but eavesdrop whenever you sit down with a book and chatter to yourself. Amongst the burble are words that we recognise, words you have heard again and again as you describe what you can see…fish, hug, Bobo, mumma, Maisy, mix, tickle, grasshopper… and we smile secretively at each other and pretend to be looking at our computers when you look up at us and then as you turn back to your page we lift our hands in the air to try and catch every precious jewel.

Sometimes I cunningly try to combine it all; the words, the story, the computer, the cuddles. A couple of times now you have sat quietly on my lap (an alien sensation) and watched Hooray For Fish on my computer. I actually think I read it a bit better than Emilia Fox but she has background music and the fish move and you get to listen to her on headphones which is a difficult act to follow in anyone’s picture book.

This month you are also enjoying the talents of the musical turtle you were given by your Aunty R and the many many books you received from everyone. There are also many toys that you have been putting through their paces of late, (they really deserve their own post) but your all time favourite toy is my mobile phone which you sometimes find in an opportune place and sometimes are given because you are being a pain in the butt at say a cafe and no one actually thought to bring a toy with them, or a warm jacket, or a bib, so what's the point in having a change bag with us at all, no actually it was your turn to pack it, call yourself a father? Ahem.

Of course I hasten to add my phone is not actually a toy at all it is an expensive piece of telecommunication equipment with probable cancer causing deathrays emerging from it so give it back to Mumma now, give it back, thank god the banana bread’s arrived.

I love the way you insist upon saying goodbye to your bath water, long passionate heart rending goodbyes, all sighs and sad eyes and blowing kisses and slumped shoulders as the last of the water slurps down the plughole, yet you often can’t be bothered to even look at me, frantically calling goodbye, when Dadda is taking you out for a ride in the car (Cah!) let alone wave.

I love the way you run, suddenly, illogically but then as if you have suddenly heard the opening strains of Swan Lake you fling yourself up on your tippeetoes. Sometimes you will also throw yourself down on the floor, again, no reason, just because, and then you might roll, if you feel like it, or perhaps fart or laugh or reach up for a kiss and a cuddle.



I can’t count the number of ways I love you in the same way I can’t count your teeth anymore. Are there more since last month? Perhaps, perhaps not. You do like to show your teeth off, baring then when anyone asks to look , or asks what the dinosaur says, yet clamping them together when I attempt to peer in still further. I have seen molars though, molars have been spotted, bottom gums, one each side, perched alone, proud, small islands of tooth in the ocean of your pink gums.

For Christmas you and the Naughty Nephews were given a trampoline by Santa via e-bay and a good pal of K and N’s who is Handy With His Tools. Result? Enormous, enclosed, hours of fun for adults and children and babies alike. The trampoline has proved very popular with the under tens but often they get sidetracked by cricket practice or cricket on the tv or a discussion about cricket and then we can sneak onto what I like to call “the trampo”. Most mornings we get to hang out here, you and I and your father and various combinations thereof.

I generally lie on my back with a book in my hand (currently and inexplicably; Death On The Nile by Agatha Christie) because I am forever optimistic that you might choose to “play quietly” beside me for twenty minutes or so. I am also forever wrong. Some may say, rightly so, what do you expect, this is not a banana lounge alongside a kidney shaped pool at a Balinese resort with a strapping young man named Edwardo to serve you cocktails, it is a trampoline and you are meant to be entertaining your eighteen month old and also it’s only 9.30 in the morning, stop daydreaming, he’s about to unzip the net wall and bounce straight out onto the paving stones. At those moments I sigh and put down my whodunit and my caprioska and position myself between you and the net flap of doom and exhort you to “run round and round”. You see, you don’t actually jump on the trampoline, such things are beneath you, but you do run round and round pumping your little legs up and down in an entertaining fashion. At some point in the round and round you usually fling yourself into the net wall and breathlessly fall back beside me, gurgling with laughter, eyes shining, shovel feet flailing, and I look at you and wonder at how lucky I am, how blessed we have been and then when you roll yourself towards me, still laughing, for a cuddle, I nearly self combust with pure joy.

This month I have been struck by your growing separateness from me, your movement away from babyness towards real-person-ness. You have your own logic and agenda and it all makes sense under that curly dark hair, all the running (but not the jumping) and the shouting and food throwing, the toddler tantrums and the daily grieving of bathwater.

It’s very hard for me to bid farewell to that baby image of you, that soft, snuggly, weeny bundle (“oh, he didn’t even make 50 cm,” said the midwife when you were born) but month by month he moves further and further away from us.

All I can do is sigh and wave and blow kisses as he swirls further down, into our past. I wrap my little boy in his bath towel and hug him tight as he calls bye bye to the bathwater and then I search for his pyjamas as the scent of bruised flowers fills the air.

With love from your very own
OvaGirl
xxxxxx

Things Are So Much Better Since I Wrote This Six Months Ago

because i have mushbrain i can write without punctuation

(Recently discovered manuscript fragment by Janice-Maree Joyce, little known Australian descendant of the more famous James. Suffered infertility but through application of various sharp and pointy devices and nasty tasting herbs experienced the miracle of birth. Now experiencing the miracle of one year without proper sleep… )

yes it’s the life yes isn’t it look at him lying there with a foot in the air of his stroller yes staring out at everyone i wouldn’t mind that lie back on comfy toweling mat with stuffed clown dangling in my face and just be pushed up to the shops and back wave my foot in the air too here kiss this and look at my toes yes fuck it where is his sock now i put it on just before we left the shop and now its gone again he likes to pull it off and put his toes in his mouth they were nice socks too not like those blue ones that stretched out longer and longer everytime he pulled at them i had that dream again last night yes between feeds yes it was the one where im with that spunky young guy we met not long ago god the very fact that i find myself saying young guy instead of just guy makes me feel old and flabby yes he was holding my hand and saying i was beautiful this handle’s not properly adjusted must get my husband onto it and i was very virtuous thinking of baby and husband and so on and also we had tickets to the theatre so i said no no our lives are too complicated and also the shows about to start even though i wanted nothing more than to shag him senseless and then last nights dream it was the same guy but now we were in his flat and it would have been brilliant yes i just know it yes except that for some reason one of my friends was in the flat too doing the washing up and saying don’t mind me love i just have to get these dishes done which tended to ruin things aha i see that sock now i stuck it in the pocket of the baby bag yes when i told my husband the dream he was working on his computer and he didn’t even look up he just said mmm i bet i know what you need and i said well yes actually yes why does the footpath run out here as if they decided they would have footpaths in front of the shops but not the houses i see an old man on his what is those things the gopher electronic sit on thing driving along the road yes not safe surely poor old man comfy though i bet thats the life might be nice sitting on a gopher thing and tootling up to the shops get to like it pretty quickly yes listen to him clapping his hands the darling having a sing now he says ay ay ay yesterday i said ay ee eye oh you i thought well at least he could start with vowels yes then we can build up to consonants people ask me what is it you are writing now or are you just being a mother and i want to punch them except i don’t have the energy why are some women back to full energy and more all super organised and boxes ticked and writing their third novel since they went into labour yes whereas i have mushbrain sleepless still one year has it been that long all i can do to write out a shopping list some days but look the darling starting to fall asleep the motion of the stroller thats the life will i have that dream again tonight all symbolic that stuff yes the dreaming pretty obvious though no time to do all the things you want anymore although we could have time for sex if we forgo dinner that could work yes then could eat later when i get up to nurse him wait lost his other bloody sock yes and now i should look back and retrace our steps yes or sod it yes and just buy new socks yes he has feet like his fathers tiny shovels yes i love him so much yes and his father too yes though we are both so tired yes and fuck it did i leave the chicken back at the butcher yes oh bugger bugger yes.

Stick this

Tricky is almost 18 months old which in my schedule meant he was due for his 12 month vaccination. Extenuating circumstances (living in Country Town, various colds and viruses, mother’s general fear of needles and dislike of seeing sharp things poked into baby flesh) had prevented these happening at an earlier time (like say, 12 months) and now, with his pre Christmas weirdness seemingly gone, it was time to visit Dr Jab.

Dr Jab explained that the 12 month vaccination consisted of not two but three needles. “Some people…” he said blithely, “only have two at this point and come back for the third but I say well, the baby’s already screaming so...”

“Mmmm,” I said. “actually I think I will be one of those people. I would prefer for him to have only two needles for this visit. Not because of the screaming,” I hastened to add, “I can handle that perfectly well, but because three seems an awful lot of vaccine in one day.”

Last time Tricky was vaccinated he was glued to my breast at the time which seemed to comfort him quite effectively but since the milkbar had its glorious farewell tour some weeks ago (albeit with a couple of surprise comeback appearances) he was instead seated on my lap, my hands holding his, one chubby thigh at a time gripped between my own.

And so, since the Magical Breasts Of Comfort were no longer available, I had him facing his father instead of me because I didn’t want to see that look of hurt betrayal in those big brown eyes and also so that I wasn’t in his firing line when he began his kicking screaming tiny fingernail clawfest.

I expected the furious shrieks, I expected the tears and the sobs.
What I didn’t expect was that he would stop almost immediately after the second injection and then seem perfectly calm from then on.

I was so surprised I almost told Dr Jab to go ahead and whack that third one in.

I guess that means it really was about the screaming after all.

That's Mrs Slattern to you

For how long is it acceptable to wear maternity clothes after the birth of your child?

I've managed to wean myself from the elastic waisted pants and the long stretchy tops but today I realised I'm still wearing my maternity bras, even though it's been at least three months since I unclipped the little window things and required them to function in a "maternity" sense. It's not because they're that comfortable or even particularly attractive, it's just that I'm too lazy to actually remove them from my undies drawer.

My life has recently been considerably enhanced and it’s not because we’re getting more sleep nor because I have almost managed to reclaim my breasts.

I haven’t wanted to talk too much about this, but over the past year I have found it increasingly difficult to hear what people were saying to me, especially in crowded theatre foyers.

All that background burble - the tinkling laughs, the earnest discussion, the rhubarb rhubarb, melded into one throbbing, pulsating mess. It was as if my head was encased in a large plastic bubble big enough to admit only one person at a time and only if they were standing uncomfortably close.

At the time I simply put this down to boredom due to the high levels of crap that are usually spouted in such places (I, myself, guilty of similar spouting) and now and then I would scare myself by assuming it was an imminent MS relapse.

More recently it got worse, especially in my right ear, and over the holiday break I spent several days squinting at my friends and relatives, trying to read their lips, and shouting ‘what?’ at them. I was even accused of shouting unnecessarily which meant I had sunk to Grumpy Grandad’s EVERYTHING MUST BE SAID IN CAPITALS status. I tried eardrops which was the proper way and bobby pins and cotton ear buds which are the Totally Wrong And Improper Way To Unblock Your Ears.

A couple of nights ago C and I met up with our housemates (and inlaws) K and N for jolliness at the opening of the Sydney Festival. A whole lot of streets had been closed off and stages set up on various corners with bands, cabaret acts and dj’s akimbo. It was fun to be roaming the streets but a lot of the live music sounded pretty shit through my plastic bubble and that just made me feel old and cranky.

Yesterday I could stand it no longer and I went to see my doctor. She brought out an enormous shining metal syringe full of warm water and balanced a bowl on my right shoulder.

“Have you had this done before?” she asked.

I had not. I smiled nervously and asked her if she thought ear candling had much to recommend it. She snorted into her metal bowl. Then she let loose with the syringe. The sensation was not unlike that of an enormous hot wet slug rushing at the speed of light through my ear canal singing Wagner at the top of its tiny lungs. It sounded quite shocking actually but not as shocking as the sound of my ear feeling OPEN at last.

“Oh my God”, I gasped. “That is incredible! That’s the most fantastic…”

I stopped. I had just caught a glimpse of what was now floating in the water of the shoulder bowl. “OH MY GOD WAS THAT IN MY EAR?”

“Yup,” said the doctor. “Don’t worry, I’ve seen worse.”
“That is possibly the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen,” I told her. “But would you mind checking the other ear?”

She peered into my left ear and hoisted her monster syringe back into action.
“Ok," she said. "We’re going again.”

The difference has been extraordinary. Clean ears make me feel brighter, more energetic, more intelligent. I feel like running up to complete strangers, people who look sad or irritable or unhealthy or ugly or just anybody really, and exhorting them to HAVE YOUR EARS SYRINGED!!

I even feel excited about loitering in theatre foyers again. I can’t wait to see if all that crap I could hear really was just the stuff between my ears.

Cheeky

Tricky and I had lunch together. We both ate ravioli except I used a fork and his was cut up and presented as “finger food.” This makes it sound almost dainty, like something you might serve with champagne on the chamomile lawn.

I was reading a book at the same time so it wasn’t till I heard the sound of gagging that I looked up to see his mouth was completely stuffed. His cheeks bulged, his eyes watered and yet, like a cross between Augustus Gloop and some mad foraging rodent, he was determinedly grabbing still more chunks, in both hands, and trying to wedge them in his mouth - even as he made little sicky noises in the back of his throat and gobs of partially chewed spinach and ricotta ravioli rolled down the front of his pirate bib.

Lunching with Tricky is like having a meal with one of those savage children of past centuries. You know, the ones presented to civilisation that were lost as a babe in the woods and given up for dead but then, miraculously, rescued and raised by wild chipmunks.

Letter to a Seventeen Month Old Landscape Gardener

My darling Tricky

You are past 17 months now of course, but what with Christmas and New Year and Mumma’s not so secret drinking habit, this letter comes a wee tad later than usual. No need of course for apologies and groveling, we’ve got plenty of time for guilt in the future. (And indeed the past, boiled baby foot anyone?)

17 months means that you are big enough to sing to yourself during car trips or just generally song-worthy moments, strange foreign words from the Land of Tricky which you punctuate with arms flung high into the air and knitting of brows. As the ultrasound indicated so many months ago, you are indeed a keen dancer, and during the festive season it took little more than a burst of Hark The Herald Angels Sing or Deck The Halls or Night Flight To Venus to cause immediate swaying of your body and stamping of your feet - much to the delight of my dad who was permanently disabled in the 70’s with Saturday Night Fever and keeps not one but two mini disco balls in his computer room.

Of the words I can recognise, it’s still all about the BUTTONS. CRACKER and WATER are also high on the playlist but just lately CHEESE has become your new best edible friend. Also a word that is unspellable but recognizable as a signifier for watermelon, which you will almost certainly eat off a BOWL with your SPOON in your CHAIR, as well as a similarly unspellable but consistent word for MILK. In the mornings you call loudly for your breakfast which sounds like you want BUTTER and believe me I’d be tempted to get it out of the fridge and taunt you with it except that I know you’d think it was CHEESE and just the sight of something yellow and cold is enough to set off your excited shrieking. Outdoors, your interests include playing with the BALL, riding in the CAR and spotting various aircrafts including COPTER and something that means AEROPLANE.

When you wake at night you call for MUMMA, DADDA and WATER but you’ve also been heard to shout loudly for your aunty N as well as your grandmother (Aphwa). For some reason you often sprinkle an OH DEAR amongst the names which makes me laugh but also you’ve got this really mournful, depressed tone of voice that you’ve managed to perfect. It makes you sound like some long forgotten prisoner shut up in a dungeon on a deserted island and if I actually get up out of bed and answer your calls I’ll trip over your long grey unkempt beard and then be bitten to death by your specially trained pet rats.

Your studies in Toddler (Beginners) are coming along nicely, you’ve managed to perfect Throwing Objects Down Stairs despite our blundering attempts to hinder you and I note that you have been refining these basic movements and applying them to mealtimes too. First you demand SPOON, then you demand a second SPOON, then you fling the first spoon quickly to one side (and I quite like the way you don’t even bother to watch its trajectory, instead watching my face for the slightest twitch of response) then you load up the second spoon with food and fling that swiftly to one side and then while I’m groveling on the floor trying to scoop up wet lumps you drop your BOWL over the opposite side and then scream loudly for WATER.


It may seem like there’s some sort of predictable routine here but in fact sometimes the water is flung first and the spoons treasured until the very end. Every meal is an adventure. Yet, also, sometime in the last month or so, I saw you brandish your spoon, capture a couple of baked beans and deliver them triumphantly to your mouth and your beaming smile of satisfaction as you chewed at your hard won tomato flavoured captives was simply delicious. It made me a little sad this obvious sign of Growing Up-ness but also relieved that if something happened to us, your Willing Slaves, you would at least be able to eat your beans nicely.

I love your laugh, your gleeful, rolling laugh, and the way that so many things delight or entrance you. Mumma doing her Riverdance impression when a certain Irish ditty appears on your Very Clever baby Music cd, for instance. This both delights and entrances.

Also eyebrows: hilarious. And bellybuttons: hysterical. This Christmas, the last word in funny you decided, were the tiny white pebbles in one of Aphwa’s potplants. Pebbles! Tiny! Many of them! The sight of them nestled around the half dead wisteria had you shrieking. Nothing could be funnier, or so you thought. On a whim you suddenly started grabbing fistfuls of the tiny white funny pebbles and throwing them to the ground. Shrieks of laughter! And then you scattered a few over the top of Poppy’s lawnmower. Thighslapping goodness! Sweeping them up with a broom though, that wasn’t funny at all. But then, you suddenly discovered, in another potplant, bark chips. Bark chips! The very idea of it! Brown, irregularly shaped, imminently throwable! You howled with glee as an adult sprinted over the paving to try and halt the inevitable tsunami of mulch and I’m pretty sure you crapped yourself you found the whole thing so funny.

Last year was your first ever Christmas and to celebrate you held it together until your first ever Christmas present was placed in your wee little five month old hands and then you suddenly became the Screaming Tomato and had to be put to bed for a nap and that was Christmas 2006.

This year there was less screaming and hence many more presents to open but also less adoring public since all your aunties were having Christmas elsewhere. Once again there was a pre-Christmas Christmas with the Naughty Nephews and with Gramma, Papa and K and N because they would be south and we would be north with Poppy, Aphwa, Uncle P and Grumpy Grandad. Among other things you were given a ball covered with small knobbly protuberances which you immediately latched onto. Given that we are slowly but definitely weaning now, it was a slightly wistful sight. And then of course you flung it down the stairs.

You have become a small solid beautiful little man with crazy hair that curls or straightens according to the weather.

You still think your parents are fantastic people and amazing adults, you think we’re as clever as all get out and funnier than a pot of mixed pebbles and bark chips. We bask in your admiration and adoration and in return we worship the ground you tip toe upon.

Because of course the truth is we’re actually not that fantastic or amazing, nor particularly clever, nor are we unusually funny (certainly not in comparison with potting materials).

But we are your parents, your mumma and dadda, and every night we lie in bed and listen to your loud protests and practice chats and general warbling and mournful prisoner requests and we thank God and the Goddesses, and baby Jesus, and Santa and Aslan and all the elves and armoured bears and saints for you, our greatest gift of all.

Happy Christmas and Happy New Year our blessed boy.

Your very own

OvaGirlxxxxxx