Lift Off 2

The Newcastle launch was held at Macleans Books in Hamilton. It was fun, it was full and the weather was nice. I did manage to bring a pen this time but it was a stupid big fat blue biro. For some reason the petite, sophisticated black pen I had carefully packed into my handbag failed to materialize at the crucial time.

It was an odd feeling standing on my little stool (no pulpit) and reading to the crowd. There were family members there, friends new and old and nodding acquaintances. It was one of those strange situations where you assume you must know everyone present and if someone appears unfamiliar then it’s because you are suffering temporary insanity. Thus I spent a goodly amount of time nodding and smiling at one woman and racking my brain to recall who she was before finally realizing that in fact it was fine not to remember her name because we had never actually met.

Some of these people I had not seen in over twenty years.

One was a girl from my art class. Our entire friendship had been based on our shared love of a) Princess Diana (we saw her when she visited the RAAF base and spent many a conversation worrying over how thin she looked and what a ghastly shade of pink she was wearing) and b) guinea pigs. Now here she was, holding my book, laughing at my shocked expression when she walked through the door.

Two of my high school teachers were also present.

I am a big big fan of teachers, two of my favourite blogs belong to high school teachers Dramalish and Spanglish. Being an airforce brat, I managed to sample a number of schools during my years of education. It makes me shudder to think about the directions my life could have taken me if I had finished my education at Students-Must-Be-Pigeonholed-And-Quickly High School or St Destroy-All-Self-Expression Catholic Ladies College.

Instead I ended up a semi rural public school half an hour’s drive from Newcastle. Truthfully there were some unattractive features of this school but I was lucky enough to have some great teachers. My English teacher, for instance, who taught me for four years. She encouraged me, she inspired me and where necessary she slapped me over the head with the Stop Being A Lazy Cow And Hand In Your Work Now stick.

It’s because of her (and the feisty director of the University of Newcastle revues, and the artistic director of the first professional theatre company I ever worked for) that I started writing and then kept going. These people were all at the book launch (the artistic director, now the executive director of the Hunter Writers Centre, was the MC) and it was a very satisfying moment to be able to thank them publicly.

It all seems a long way away when I watch my baby totter along the sand (we're still at the Beach Shack) but I wonder what school education will be like for him, and whether he will be lucky enough to find teachers and mentors along his journey who were as good as mine.

During the signing bit of the launch one of my ex-teachers passed me a book. I picked it up and paused.

Unlike my English teacher, the last time I saw Mrs Modern History was probably on the last day of my exams. ‘I um...I can't write "Mrs Modern History' I said.

She laughed and told me her first name and so, with a flourish of my big fat blue biro, I signed her book.

It wasn’t the sophisticated petite black pen I had envisaged, but the words, I realised, were still the same.

Lift Off

A rainy night and a city full of visiting APEC delegates couldn’t keep a warm and very lovely audience away from Shearers bookstore and (hoopla!) the launch of my book!

(Actually it did keep some folk away but that just meant MORE WINE for the rest of us.)

C and I (with Tricky in tow) arrived to find one window full of pastel blue books, each featuring a pair of thin white legs kicking away in a jaunty Dildo-Cam Be Damned manner.

“Ooh look,” said C excitedly as we walked through the door.
“ Mmm yes,” I said, and swallowed back a tiny bit of sick.

Cunningly, part of the bookshop seemed to have been custom built for launches and/or hellfire sermons to the Quivering Brethren (ala Uncle Amos of Cold Comfort Farm fame). In one corner, looming over the masses was a pulpit type contraption that featured a microphone and quite possibly a glow in the dark crucifix.

From here ABC Radio’s James Valentine peered down at the audience, thumped his fist a couple of times and launched the book in true JV style- a blend of the very arch, the very funny and the slightly perplexed, with occasional use of the word “speculum”, whilst I skulked ‘back stage’ deep breathing and pondering the fate of all those books I could see stacked up behind the pulpit.

When it was my turn I wobbled out my thank you speech and then read my Amusing Snippet for the crowd. Proper writers must be very tall people I have decided. I spent most of the reading on my tippee toes so I could actually see over the top of the pulpit. A great many warm and friendly faces smiled back when I did so, including three Naughty Nephews who had shot their arms immediately into the air when James asked if anyone in the audience knew that they appeared in the book.

After this, I did that book signing malarky. What an odd thing. Firstly because I was herded through the shop, sat down at a little table and lent a pen (because of course I didn’t have one on me. Pen? What? Why? Oh.) and secondly because people then lined before me in an orderly manner clutching my book.

Looking down the line all I could see were multiple pairs of kicking white legs. It was like some strangely surreal cancan number.

And then the signing thing. What does one write? And why hadn’t I thought properly about this before. Which page should I pick? And on it went… in the first moments, people presented their books to me, people I knew and loved and still I stared at them blankly until they gently reminded me of their names.

Even then, I was a mess. “Suzie….?” I gulped, as if this was the most bizarre and extraordinary name I had ever come across… “is that um with an ‘s’?”

This, with a woman I am friends with, I have shared playwriting prizes with, attended theatre workshops with, exchanged numerous emails with - all beginning (remarkably enough) with the words “Dear Suzie….”

I blame it on the bright lights. And the sicky in the stomach feeling. Also the wine, even though I didn’t drink anything other than water till all Writerly Duties were complete.

And this week I do it all again, in Newcastle. At least this time I’ll know to have a pen.

PS I fear that there is No Launch For Melboune. I KNOW! Outrageous! Will confirm this with Powers That Be but in my heart I know this to be the case...

Once Was Wireless

ARRGGH! This is the sound of someone tearing out their hair after a full month of dial-up. What kind of third world banana republic do I live in? How can I blog freely and easily when I have to unclip the thing from the phone, stick it in the thing hole in the side of my computer and then wait for a connection to be made? There are toddlers to be chased. Interviews to do. Toddlers to be chased etc etc.

This means that many moons have passed since I last wrote (including that freaky red lunar eclipse) and a multitude of small yet bloggable events have occurred most of which have slipped porridge-like through my fingers.

But, basically....

EVIL SHOPPING PLAZA MULTI NATIONAL SHOE SHOP: 1
CLUELESS IDIOT PARENTS OF TINY WALKING ZOMBIE: 0

Sandals? Wrong, all wrong.

Tiny baby feet that have begun to take cute tottery little steps are soft and innocent and unformed. They must be shod not with hard-soled buckle on sandals but with similarly soft, innocent and unformed leather type booties that allow said little feet to develop naturally.

Tricky managed to wear his Evil Sandals for one day before we got the news about the squashy soft type shoe. C and I sat in a cafe for a full hour in a little town in the country and fretted about arch support and ugly spade like hobbit-feet before we realised that the cafe was next door to a hippie shoe shop. Hippie Lady in shop was all about releasing and unfettering the feet and cloaking them only in soft unformed leather shoelets. I believe she may hold similar attitude towards bosoms.

FATHERS DAY MAKES MOTHER'S NIGHT

The difference between this year's Father's day and last year's was all in the shopping. Tricky was with me during the crucial five minutes I had to dash into a bookshop while C was getting ready for a presentation in town.

Unsurprisingly, as a 13 month toddler, Tricky is a wee tad heavy as compared to last year's morsel of scrawny baby goodness. Also he wanted to try out his new soft unfettered-foot shoes. Sadly this meant he was inspired similarly to unfetter all the books in the book store.
Bad shelves. Bad nasty restrictive shelves. Be free, humourous travel book! Take wing, o witty volume of domestic poetry.

The upshot of all this tottering and snatching at shelves and me oopsing and reshelving was that I had to carry him in one arm as I made my dash from book to card to till. I thought about this late on the night before Father's day as I spent valuable Minutes That Could Be Sleeping measuring and cutting down the Father's day card I had bought because I had inadvertantly picked up the stupid buggery bum wrong size envelope.

TONIGHT:
BOOK LAUNCHES.
AUTHOR LURCHES.

I have done a few interviews for the book now and I think that possibility I'm getting the hang of it.

For instance I have now learned that when one laughs ironically about those far off days of free love when your biggest fear was, say, getting pregnant, one should not in the same breath refer to highschool. Then, when one notes the slightly aghast expression on radio interviewer's face, one should not compound one's blunder by saying hastily: "actually when I said highschool, what I actually meant was university or my early twenties," and then follow this unconvincing bit of bollocks up by hysterical nervous laughter.

Tonight is the Sydney launch and I have to say, I feel a bit sort of... nervous. There's been a lot of good feedback and some very kind emails and comments so, you know, fingers crossed...

Letter To A Thirteen Month Old Footwear Gourmand

Darling Tricky

You are now thirteen months old. Lordy. How time flies.

Milestones keep zipping past like G-Strings at a New York strip club when Kevin Rudd is in town. They’re not, I hasten to add, the milestones that get all the publicity in the Babylove book or the annoying emails I keep getting from PerfectMother.com (not its real name) that regularly inform me of all the things my baby is failing to do, like pointing, or controlled waving. Or cross stitching.

What about the more subtle milestones? Applauding Your Mother, for instance.

This milestone was successfully reached during the last two weeks. I was singing Incy Wincy Spider and when I finished you smiled and then you STARTED CLAPPING. And you did the same thing after Twinkle Twinkle and also after Five Little Ducks.

Applauding Your Mother is a sadly underrated milestone that needs way more publicity because we all know it completely disappears by the age of five and soon after is replaced by the far less delightful Milestone: Scowling At The Extreme Dagginess Of your Mother.

This will last for the next nineteen years.
Here’s another underrated Milestone that you have successfully achieved at quite an early age: Chewing On Shoes.

I assure myself that this milestone helpfully boosts your immune system. This means you should have the resistance of an elephant (the very healthy kind) because you really do like to chow down on those soles and some of our boots have seen a lot of action.

Rarely do I put on my grey fluffy slippers without noting the fetching little half moon of saliva above the toes and I smile and think: my baby is growing up.

Other milestones?

Scoffing. As babies go you seem to eat a lot, to the point where people remark upon your levels of consumption. This could be because of the delicious and wholesome food my loving hands prepare for you but in truth I think it’s because your father and I have the food distraction technique down pat and most of the time you wouldn’t have a clue what goes down your throat because you’re so gobsmacked by the incredible SHOW!! that goes on at every dinnertime.
Roll up, roll up for the Great Big Dinner Show! We got Songs! We got Funny Faces! We got Silly Noises!

When Dadda does the cooking he also creates pleasing to the eye patterns upon the surfaces of your food and thus is his Inner Barista briefly liberated.



Of course the whole concept of Dinner And A Show is hardwired into your parents' makeup because you can’t work as an actor in this country without at some point “doing” dinner theatre. It wasn’t Dirty Dicks but it left its scars and also that annoying boom tish noise and a tendency to puns.

Still, as long as we can sing it, or chant it, or make our fingers do the dancing across the dinner table, you will eat it. And often, if there is singing is involved, you will applaud it.

We’re not complaining. We just fret a little because it’s not strictly art.

You talk more now; the old faves still apply “up!”, “mama”, “dadda”, “nahnah”, “get me another beer, wench”, but we are aware that one day more words shall be forthcoming.

Words and then phrases and then conversations and then soliloquies and then great ranting diatribes to journalists from current affairs shows about parents who blog about their children.

Ah yes, it’s all ahead.

You saved the biggest Milestone so far for the day that you turned thirteen months. On that day it was as if a little switch went off in your brain, and lo the little switch was marked: “Walking Is Not Half Bad”.

For the past few weeks you have teased us, us, your Doting Parents, with the hint, the promise, the prospect of walking, more than that; you have laughed at us, scoffed at us, taunted us a second time and insisted our mothers smelt of elderberries.

Crawling, you seemed to say, is what all the cool kids were doing, not that loathsome walking, or if not crawling, then simply being carried from point A to B (and then C, D, E and F) by your Willing Slaves.

True, sometimes you would rise from your sitting position, as if to say, Behold Me! I Am Risen (From The Sitting Position) and then you might take a few steps, sometimes as many as ten, while the Willing Slaves gathered and cheered from the sidelines and smiled as they massaged their aching backs.

But then, it was if you suddenly tired of the adulation and the fancy footwork and everyone knows crawling is so much quicker anyway and hey you, slave, pick me up I say. Jiggle me on the spot. Now sing. Sing I tell you! Sing Toot Toot Chugga Chugga Big Red Car! Again! Quickly! Make a Funny Face while you do it…no wait, you bore me…give me to someone else.


Having got used to you being at ankle height for so long, it is almost shocking to see you amble past at above knee level.

Firstly, because you’re not actually that good at it and when I use words like stroll, meander and amble, what I really mean is
Stumble Like A Dwarf Extra on “Shaun Of The Dead”.

And secondly because it looks so…well, so not like a baby. More like a…little boy. A little zombie boy maybe, but a little boy none the less. In very dirty socks, because you don't have any shoes.

Yesterday we decided it was time, now that your feet were making regular committed contact with the ground, for you to finally have shoes and so we took you to a shoe shop.

God I wish we had a camera with us, not just to photograph you in your new sandals but also to document the embarrassingly drippy way your father and I behaved.

How we smiled and simpered, how we hugged ourselves with big beaming grins, how we dabbed at our moist eyes and made awww! noises, as you tottered your way around the shoe shop.

Look, I wanted to say to the other customers, That Is My Son! He Is Walking! In His New Sandals! Make way o lowly shoe patrons, because He Has Risen and Now He Walks Amongst You!

How we triumphantly sang as we began to drive home, songs of ducks and big red cars and twinkly stars, and how you clapped and laughed and kicked your newly shod feet.

He’s falling asleep, your father said later. We were still driving and it was now dark. We had stopped by the river earlier for fish and chips and that led to a drink at the pub and now we were rushing slightly. You had gone ominously quiet and there was still supper and bathtime to go. I turned on the light and leaned over the back seat, preparing myself for another loud round of Toot Toot Chugga Chugga.

But you weren’t asleep, I saw, far from it. One newly sandaled foot was wedged into your mouth and you were chewing contemplatively as you stared up out the window at the stars.

That’s two milestones at once, I noted. My baby is growing up.

All my love

Your Very Own
OvaGirl
xxxx

Because you asked...

Ah....Nature.

Holiday Statistics

Days spent at Beach Shack so far: 8

Mornings Mama has spent Sleeping In while Dadda takes baby to beach: 8

Oysters consumed so far: 60

Bottles of wine consumed: 5

Dolphin Sightings: 1 (but was in fact pod of about 20 spotted from loungeroom window leading to hurried rush down to beach, allowing exciting and quite close range viewing)

Kangaroo Sightings: 2 (one during bush walk, the other was FIVE KANGAROOS SUDDENLY APPEARING IN OUR BACK YARD)

Minutes of Fascination for baby provided by Kangaroos In Back Yard Incident: 2

Minutes of Fascination for parents provided by Kangaroos In Back Yard Incident: 15

Minutes of DVD filming of KIBYI before realising that Kangaroos eating grass, while exciting in real life and happening 2 metres away from you, is actually extremely dull footage: 15

Number of Digital photographs taken during KIBYI: Too Embarrassed To Say

Number of Individual Kangaroo Turds discharged during KIBYI: 80 to 100

Number of Individual Kangaroo Turds picked up by baby in attempt to eat: 1

Number of Individual Kangaroo turds picked up by Mama with plastic bag and unpleasant look on her face: 80 to 100

Number of Loud Shouting Incidents between Parents: 3

Number of Near Poisoning of Baby Incidents, via previously unnoticed cockroach bait (and leading directly to one of the Shouting Incidents above): 1

Number Of Loud Shouting Incidents Averted By Sudden Viewing Of Pictures Of Baby on Computer Screen Saver: 3

Level of Satisfaction with Special Magical Grownup Time while on Holidays: Very High (but have decided to not share this statistic with Other Parent so as to guard against complacency)

What OvaGirl Did Next...

Sleazy hypnotists and dancing chickens, pagan weddings and costumed sheep, oversexed guinea pigs and the smell of boiled wet dog. IVF, infertility and family…
It’s a love story...

I started blogging in January 2005. The year before that my partner C and I had discovered, via a series of unpleasant and embarrassing tests, that we were infertile.

The discovery came after a very long period of “casually” trying to conceive– since if we admitted we were actively trying then we would also have to admit that we were actively failing. And so the years rolled on by in a great flurry of work and travel and generally doing all the things one does when one is not with child.

“No no,” we would say jovially, “we haven’t quite got the knack of making a baby yet, but we’re having a lot of fun practicing.” And that was funny for about, oh, six months.

In 2004, finally, we had to face the fact that there was something amiss with the plumbing – either mine or C’s or both, and a trip to my GP saw me coming away with a referral to the fertility clinic at a nearby hospital.

This was us on the official first stage of The Great Big Fertility Ride. That day we came home from the hospital when the specialist told us we needed to go straight to IVF was a particularly special one and I rate it up there with the day my mother died and the day I was diagnosed with MS.

Everyone has different ways of coping and mine was to get onto the internet and randomly google terms like “barren”, “my uterus sux” and “dried up girly bits”.

And so it was that I discovered a hitherto unknown world of blogging. Not just a world of blogging but a very special corner of that world where People Who Can’t Seem To Have A Baby write about the way they feel.

I think I’d heard of blogs but I had no idea what one was and suddenly I was reading stuff by women who felt as angry, as hurt, as totally fucking ripped off as me, and it was like coming home. At the same time my husband, also hurt and bewildered, but also seeing the devastating effect this news had on me, had dug out the number of an alternative practitioner whom we would eventually come to know and love as the Chinese Fertility Goddess.

And then I started to write.

Years ago I had a friend, Simone, who used to refer to acts carnal as ‘legs up and laughing’. This seemed a cheerful descriptor of what was generally a funny activity (at least where C and I were concerned) and so I mangled it to give me “L’Eggs Up and Laughing”. At first I wrote about the hideous tests, the unhappy news, the weird smelly herbs we had to boil up for the Chinese Fertility Goddess, but quite quickly it became more than that.

In my efforts to make a family I had begun to examine my relationship with my own family, my childhood, my small nephews who had come from London to live nearby, and, my relationship with this man, my husband C, who sat beside me in the carriage of The Great Big Fertility Ride and indeed all the carriages of all the rollercoasters of our life together.

One day, looking back through some of the things I had written on this blog, I decided to send a few posts to my agent. She in turn sent these onto a publisher.

And they said…yes.

Well, actually what they said was that they wanted me to write a book. And it would be the blog, but also more again.

And so I said… yes.

And this September, two years after our first IVF cycle began, My Book is being released.

This means some things will change.

For instance, it may surprise you to discover that OvaGirl is a Made Up, Secret Squirrel, Clark Kentish sort of name. I know! Shock!

And also, this blog may seem to have slimmed up, since last you saw it.

That’s because I have deleted most of the early entries, ie those leading up to Tricky’s birth. (And let me tell you that caused me no end of heartache because of the beautiful comments people left for me.) I did this because the book contains nearly all these entries anyway, but polished up and with incriminating names and patently stupid bits removed.

But I have left some posts, including the start and the end, intact, because I wanted people (who don't read the book) to see that there can be a happy ending to the Great Big Fertility Ride, even though its carriages might get a bit skanky and scratched and pong of chucked up steak sandwich.

I’m having a wee little holiday now.

I’m also doing Book Stuff, launches and publicity guff. If you’re in Sydney and you want to come to a book launch on September 5th, let me know on the comments or contact me through my profile. There will also be one in Newcastle and hopefully Melbourne and other places at some stage.

Legs Up And Laughing will be available in the UK in October. And in the US?... well, I don't know. Ask your bookshop! It's published by Murdoch Books and it's a Pier 9 imprint.

And it has a pretty cover!

And finally, if you are from that Corner Of The Blogging World I talked about before, (and further afield too, the theatre people and the political people and the writerly people) then I want to let you know that at the end of my book, on the acknowledgements page is this:

Thankyou...

To all those who read and commented and supported me on my blog “L’Eggs Up And Laughing”, throughout the events of this book. You shared my grief as well as my joy. You made me feel part of a community who knew exactly how I felt. You kept me writing.

Back Soon (honest)

Your Very Own OvaGirl...

Vanessa xxx

Speak My Language

I’m glad I don’t understand One Yr Old Speak because as I write this my ears would be scorching, nay, scalding, nay, dripping red hot molten flaps of ear flesh.

According to the Screaming Tomato, Mama is variously a pppptttaka! and a bubababagh! And also, I am ashamed to say, a mmmmmmemmmmgh.

It seems that “sleepytime” at 11am is a completely rubbish idea.

Mean (Ova) Girls

Tonight, HRS (our live in youth worker) and I were preparing to watch the DVD of Mean Girls.

This is a film that has been repeatedly recommended to me by HRS (as well as other friends, including Mysterious George) following my recent, rather late, appreciation of the cheerleader epic Bring It On.

For weeks now, in the frosty environs of Country Town, I have been chanting happily to myself: “I say brrr it’s cold in here…”

HRS being the glorious age of 21 and hence a source of knowledge that I can only dream about is generally kind to me, answering my questions with great patience and minimal eye rolling.
Yes, I can set up facebook for you.
No, you can’t krump to Enya.

But tonight, the tables were turned.

As I turned on the tv the screen seemed to explode with action and mayhem. Strange pigmen in jumpsuits were running amok, David Tennant was popping his neck veins in an effort to hurry Everyone Out Now and several ominous silvery upside down funnel shapes with protruding metallic plungers and hysterically nasal robotic voices were in hot pursuit.

"Ooh goody," I said and sat down in front of the screen.

"What are…those?" The voice was HRS’s and the confusion was legion. I looked around and noted her wide eyed horror, her ‘does not compute’ stare.

"Those are Daleks," I said.

"What are... Daleks?"

I snorted. "How can you not know the Daleks? It’s Doctor Who!"

HRS was visibly shaken but she attempted to rise above it.

"Hello?" she said sniffily, employing the classic young person’s verbal riposte of the upward inflection. "I was born in 1985? Doctor Who started before my time?"

"Have you ever heard of World War Two?" I asked her. "That was also before your time."

"Wait," she said, "is there a character in it called Smith?"

I sighed heavily and gave her a withering look. "That’s Lost in Space," I said. "Dr Smith is nothing like Doctor Who."

"Well it’s like Twin Peaks," she protested. "I had never even heard of Twin Peaks before you told me about it last week. I never knew it existed."

I turned back to the tv, holding my hand up in her face as I did.

"Whatever," I said.

Letter To A One Year Old Afterimage

Darling Tricky

A year? Truly? Are you crazy?

Surely it’s actually been ten years?

Or three seconds?

Or the blink of a curious eye fringed with long dark lashes?

But there it is. You are One.

Despite early promising signs, including your freakishly brilliant ability to stand…and then sit…there has been no walking.

To be fair, it’s been a busy month, social calendar duties, visits to family, preparations for anniversary of Squirty Out The Clacker Day (as opposed to Squirty Up The Clacker Day, being anniversary of transfer of your embryonic self from ice cube tray to …well… to me.)

And of course, you are my child after all and anyone who knows me can reliably set their clock by the hours I shall be late for any appointment, meeting, milestone or (ahem) wedding they may have arranged with me.

Of course, as if to prove that all you required was the correct encouragement, you managed to take a step or two for Aphwa (Grandmother) in Newcastle and then you practically skipped around the room for your Aunty N in Sydney. Still, I am absolutely confident that in the next week and a half the Real Walking Shall Begin.

This is because for some stupid reason your father and I decided to leave the video camera back in Sydney. Yes, that camera that has been dogging your every move, recording your crazy rock and roll bouncing, your obsessive twirling of the loungeroom chairs, your nude, après bath racing in front of the heater. IT IS NO LONGER IN THE HOUSE. Feel free to bust some moves and then laugh at your silly sad unprepared parents.

Perhaps in compensation for non-walking, you do like to sit with your legs outstretched and then spin yourself around on your bottom. It’s as if you hate to miss out on any action and hence the 360 degree viewing. You also love to clap hands, you love to shout eh! Eh! EH!, you love to roll a ball and indeed be helped to kick it and you deeply deeply love your grandparents' dog Jimmy.

Of course you love Aphwa and Poppy too but they don’t let you pull their tail or poke your finger into their eyes. Jimmy seems to allow all this, sighing a little and perhaps rolling over if the fingernails get too sharp. Gentle with Jimmy, we cry, GENTLE! And you laugh quietly to yourself and then gently taste his toenails.

On the day of your birthday you were in Newcastle visiting Poppy and Aphwa and of course Ever Patient Jimmy. It was bitterly cold but the sky was a brilliant blue and the sun shone all day. You hung out in cafes and played with your Aunty K and also Nanny Annie who bought you a yellow puppet which was both alluring and deeply deeply creepy as puppets often are.

That night we had your first birthday party, just a weeny one. Nanny Annie’s daughter and baby grandson came to play and Aunty K brought a birthday cake which doubled as her trial wedding cake. Aunty K, who is undertaking an extensive investigation of the mudcake genre, decided that white chocolate mudcake with raspberries was a lovely birthday cake but not a suitable wedding cake. Her gruelling search continues.

You however, enjoyed it immensely.
Your second First Birthday Party was in Sydney, amongst the loving rough and tumble of your Three Big Cousins aka the Naughty Nephews. I could tell they were delighted to see you because NN1 softly ruffled your hair and gave you the sweetest and gentlest of cuddles, NN2 pointed his Harry Potter wand and at you and invoked all the Unspeakable Curses but then later was spotted hugging you, quite firmly, which effectively counters all Evil Spells, and NN3, he who has loved you since you were a bulge in my belly, allowed his new mouse to crawl over your head.

The mice are newish pets for the nephews who dote on their every sniffling whisker. In this moment, NN3 brought together two things he loved very much. It was a beautiful moment indeed, but a little short lived, due to Nutino’s natural agility and your mother’s slight squeamishness at the sight of a rodent running over her baby’s hair.

At the party there were people we hadn’t seen for a while, babies who had all grown since we disappeared to Country Town and….an enormous Number One Cake iced in pink and studded with FOUR PACKS of Smarties made by Aunty N with decorative assistance from nephews, Uncle K and Dadda.

Alongside the iced ducky and Number One biscuits, it was an impressive spread, almost frightening. I didn’t think that such an enormous cake could disappear in a few hours but of course I had not factored in the combination of grownups, champagne and a Nigella Lawson recipe.

Finally, after a lengthy drive, we returned to Country Town and a third First Birthday Party. The loungeroom was decorated with streamers and birthday flags, the back yard held more surprises and an extremely excited little Girl, three year old Miss P, helped with the proceedings. There’s a SANDPIT she squealed. A SANDPIT! Shhh said her parents, it’s a secret. She nodded and pressed her lips firmly together for a second. And there’s a SWING!!! There was also another beautiful birthday cake for you to blow the candle out (or to be assisted…It’s a CANDLE!!!) and because it was very late in the evening, a piece set aside for the next day for you to sample.

It really has been a year.

A year ago I saw you for the first time and it shocked me, your bright peering eyes searching my face across my still swollen belly.

I remember asking your father to take you and watching him carry you around the room, his face aglow.

I remember the heavy rain as we tried to leave the hospital with you wrapped up, warm and sleepy.

I remember the fairy like ambience of our warm house as we arrived with three excited little boys, freshly bathed and waiting with bright eyes and smiles to see their tiny cousin for the first time.

I remember how, in those first days, my body heavy and exhausted with the aftermath of your arrival, I kept seeing your face around me, in the pattern of light on the ceiling, the swirl of blankets on my bed, the two eye shaped marks in the wood grain on the cabinet that holds your clothes and nappies.

It was like an afterimage of my first sight of you, the image of your face burned into my brain, a sudden bright flash after all those waiting years of darkness. I’m so glad that I wrote about this at the time because now, a year later, the blankets are just blankets, the pattern of light on the ceiling is just that. But when I look at those two marks in the wood, I remember, and I see your eyes staring back at me and I see your face again as it was, in that miraculous, extraordinary moment when you finally came to us.

It has been one year of broken sleep and mush brain, one year of fighting for time… to write, to work, to heal, to exercise, to love your father, to do all the things that scream to be done. One year of feeling my body age and stretch and recognizing that it has changed forever and not in a good way either.

But it has also been a year of joy, and of love, of watching you grow and laugh and reach out for your Mama and Dadda, of hearing your voice and feeling the incredible softness of your skin and your hair (as well as the incredible sharpness of your fingernails).

And it has been, above all the crazy events of this year, all the stress and heartaches, the worries and struggles, a Year Of You.

And what that really means, when it comes down to it, is that it has also been the Best Year Of My Life.

Happy First Birthday my baby boy.

May this next year be full of magic and happiness...
... of joy and of learning
....and always, always, of love.

Your very own
OvaGirl
xxx

Sicky Tricky...

Tricky, or Mr Snottles as he has come to be known, has been sick again. We've got the coughing, we've got the slimy nose business and one horrid night we had the very high temperatures and judicial dosing with Baby Panadol.

It was obviously stupid of me to think that I could get away with just the one nasty upper respiratory infection this winter, especially in Country Town where apparently RI's are the disease de jour. C thinks it has something to do with all the chemicals that get sprayed onto various crops around the place. Yay. I think about all those crisp sunny wintry days when I walked into town pushing Tricky in the stroller and lustily breathing in lungfuls of bracing country air.

At least in Sydney you expect it to be horribly polluted and chest infection inducing.

And of course this means that we've all got the lurgy, parents, filmmakers (including the ones living with their 3yr old in a caravan in our backyard). Welcome to the House of Phlegm.

(*pauses blogging a moment to cough and hack loudly*)

(*blows nose*)

(*drops tissue on table*)

(*notes heavy "thunk" sound*)

(*feels mildly disgusted*)

The doctor is very nice and sensible and doesn't prescribe anything at all except more of what I'm doing which is mostly breastfeeding on demand and lots of cuddles.

Which makes a nice change from the last doctor we saw here who prescribed antibiotics and steroids and then gave me a fistful of repeat prescriptions. "I tend to overprescribe," he muttered as he did so. Um, yes. Quite.

A few days later we've still got the snot and the coughing but the happy little bubba boy is back to business. And the business is learning to walk. He's microseconds away, I'm absolutely sure of it, all the standing and the balancing and yesterday we both saw him take a step.

In less than a week he will be one year old.

When I think about where I was a year ago

And then the year before that...

It's enough to make me reach for the tissues again, but this time it's not about the snot.

Ovagirl’s Tips for Helping You and Your Baby Sleep.

#32 Try Putting A Toy In Baby’s Cot For Him To Find In The Morning.

Somewhere near the crack of dawn when you are desperate for just ten minutes more sleep and you can hear that your baby is starting to wake, it may occur to you to sneak into baby’s room and lob a couple of toys over the side of the cot without being seen, thus cunningly distracting him and providing potentially even half an hour of quiet amusement while you sneak back to bed.

This is not a good idea.

This is in fact, a stunningly bad idea, especially if you are half asleep yourself and pay no mind to the weight or size of the toys you are lobbing into the cot.

From bitter experience I can assure you that even a small stripey monkey with a little jingly thing in its tummy falling unexpectedly from the sky will cause sudden terror, and ensure the rapid progression of your offspring from slightly whingy baby to full blown Screaming Tomato.

Monkeys. Light. Stripey. Not Suitable For Cot lobbing.

When Country Town Becomes Funky Town

So last night was a special kind of night because HRS, the funky youthworker who lives with us, offered to babysit Tricky while C and I went Out.

To a place where there would be live music. And wine. And jolly little tables to sit around, bearing platters of olives and small electric candles which were oddly effective.

At first I thought I wouldn’t go because frankly I was tired and it all seemed a bit of a fuss, having to get changed out of the same pair of jeans and blundstone boots I’ve been wearing all week.

Another group of filmmakers have come to stay with us. They’re a couple and they’re very environmentally conscious and have brought their own caravan to sleep in which runs on yakfat or some other form of non polluting home made fuel. It’s parked in our backyard and it reminds me of the caravan my grandparents used to tootle about the Central Coast.

I have very fond childhood memories surrounding that caravan, including the time the local Christian group came into the caravan park and rounded up all the kids who were there for the school holidays and made all the boys hold onto one rope and all the girls hold onto another rope as they went round and round the park.

My (then) littlest sister, whose name is Toni, and who had short hair and was wearing jeans at the time, was put onto the boys’ rope and neither I nor my second sister AJ noticed. Poor Toni was trapped on the boys’ rope all morning until finally we saw her being led away, crying bitterly, with all the other boys to whittle sticks or light fires or do something equally manly. AJ and I had been concentrating very hard on making brooches out of magazine cuttings and plaster of paris in plastic spoons.

Anyway the thing is that the Caravan Filmmakers who are living in our backyard have a child as well, a very sweet three year old little girl. And last night HRS very kindly offered to babysit her too and so the CFs decided they would also go to see the show and drink wine and eat olives too.

And so we went and it was a fun old time indeed.

The venue was new and tres groovy and utterly foreign to the general ambience of Country Town, being more suited to a dingy corner of Melbourne or Sydney. Also, I can’t remember the last time I saw live music and although they were mostly covers, they were covers of 80's love songs like Bizarre Love Triangle and Throw Your Arms Around Me which made me feel a great wave of youthful nostalgia and also made me pick up the little table candle and wave it solemnly in the air during the choruses. However that may have been the several glasses of wine I drank which also made me feel youthfully nostalgic because I also can’t remember the last time I drank more than two glasses of wine in an evening.

“We must get up and dance”, I muttered fiercely to C at one point.
“Ah…no, we must not,” C muttered back. I pouted and thought about our many nights out together in the past, the drinking, the dancing, the hijinks in the toilets (ahem). In the cold hard light of day though, I’m quite relieved.

I actually did wear the same jeans I wore all week, but in the spirit of going out I also wore my new coat and beret, my sparkly earrings and a pair of black zip up boots I bought in an op-shop last week for six bucks.

If only I knew how much I would enjoy myself, the youthful nostalgia and the waving electric candles in the air, I would have made a bit more effort.

Clean jeans perhaps, or just maybe a plaster of paris brooch in the shape of a spoon.

That Beautiful Game Called Life

In the country one experiences the rawness of life and death. Without all the chatter and hoo hah of city life, suddenly one sees things as they really are, one can truly experience both the joys and the tragedies of human existence.

Thus, joy was experienced a few weeks ago when C was trawling through a second hand shop for furniture so that we would have things to sit on in our new home and he discovered for a paltry sum of money an old foozball table. (We originally called it babyfut, as taught to us by our French friends during a long ago holiday in Spain, but our funky youth worker HRS who has her thumb firmly on the button of all things fashionable laughed scornfully at us.)

Whatever the name, it is truly fantastic.. There are little red men. There are little blue men. There is a little ball that gets slammed from one end of the table to another via the turning of handles on the side. You can keep score of your goals via a series of numbered cubes!

What need us of foolish fripperies like, say, chairs, now we had entertainment, and more importantly for a couple of sleep-deprived parents, a suitably exciting substitute for sex.

Yet, and here was the true joy of the foozball, it was not just for the two sad old people vicariously reliving their youthful European travels, but for everyone, arts workers, youth workers, visitors, the man who delivers the Australian Post express mail. All who gazed upon the pleasingly marked out mini soccer field, with its two teams of equally matched little plastic men, would be smitten with its charms, would be aching for a match, and then another, and then a best of three.

And, as the great wheel of life turns, so too did we experience tragedy. A couple of days ago when a new arts-worker, a younger, more vigorous, need I say male, arts worker, was playing against C, he managed to snap one of the little red men in half.

And lo the cries of grief were legion.

In vain did C say “let’s pretend he committed a foul and got red carded off, play on…”. Without a little red men to guard that exact spot it was too easy for all the little blue men to concentrate their efforts and play the ball into that area and then, how deeply frustrating that proved to be for the human being who was playing red and twirling the rubber handles to no avail.

And like a drought stricken paddock, the foozball field was left fallow and proclaimed to be “stuffed”.

But then, another few days passed, and time brought perspective and calmness and also an opportunity for judicious googling. And the company who made the foozball table was discovered to still be in existence albeit in a completely other country ie the US which may just as well have been the moon. But also, on the instructions for the foozball, an email address was discovered. And a plaintive plea for help was emailed. And replied to.

And this morning as I made myself a coffee I heard a whooping in the loungeroom and went out to discover C and HRS jumping for joy. The company had emailed back with a phone number for their supplier in Melbourne. And the supplier in Melbourne said that they could replace the sad little broken red man. In fact they could give us a few of each colour in case of any more overly enthusiastic arts worker accidents. And they would be sent in the post today. For free!

It remained to be seen whether our small plastic team mates would arrive. But for now, the promise of renewal was enough. New energy flowed through our wrists, new games were played by disabling the little blue man that corresponded with his broken opponent. Round the wheel spun again, much like a little plastic foozball man determined to kick the bejesus out of a little plastic ball, and life was good.

Letter To An Eleven Month Old Birthday Present

My darling Tricky

You are now A Month Off Being One Year old.

How can this be? It’s impossible, ridiculous, incredible, exciting and just a wee bit sad all at the same time.

Over the past few weeks we have gotten into the habit of bringing you into bed when you wake in the morning and we lie you down between us in the hopes of getting a precious few extra nanoseconds of sleep.

When you’re still half awake you keep your eyes tightly shut and you wail and pound your tiny fists and thrash your head from side to side and carry on a real treat and there’s no more sleep for any of us. Your father and I are looking forward to this particular phase being over but I happen to know that I’m exactly the same before I’m properly awake except for the head thrashing.

But the thing is, once you are awake, you smile and sit up between us and look around with curious bright eyes and clap your hands and chat away about oh nothing in particular, syllables mostly and how ridiculous they are, and then if we fail to pay proper attention you gently lean towards us and thrust your fingers up our nose or pull our hair. And that one you get from your father.

I’m still nursing you, but only just, mostly at night or in the evening and in the morning “comfort feeds” my GP called them, as if they were nutritionally less essential than other feeds we’ve shared, and perhaps they are but you’re still a little baby, still my little baby, and comfort is essential still, for both of us. But I can see that as the weeks go by that time is also passing.

The other night I held you in my arms and we stood staring accusingly at your father as he typed Just One More Email and then I said: Tell Dadda it’s Bath time. And you did. Because you are a genius. Or at least you said: gnuugagang Ba Ba. True, your diction was poor. But your tone was firm and assertive with exactly the right amount of nag and you only had to say it three times before Dadda finally pushed Send.

Dadda is the King Of Bath Time. I realised this a couple of weeks ago when I went to put you in the bath and I knelt beside you to hold you up and your father said: no no, let him sit up by himself you don’t need to hold him, it’s fine.

And then, and I don’t quite know why, seeing you unsupported sitting up by yourself, caused me to have some kind of horrible anxiety attack, it was as if a giant foot was squashing me down to the bathmat and I just lay there and cried and had to crawl my way out of the bathroom. But thinking back on it, it was possibly the first time I had bathed you since the Foot Under The Hot Tap Incident which had obviously scarred me even if it hadn’t scarred you.

In about two seconds I think you are going to walk which really means you are going to run. Even now, while crawling, you achieve speeds that no baby should be able to reach, one moment I look up to see you playing by your fabulous fifties style tent as gifted to you by Uncle Marky the next you suddenly appear at my feet with my computer cord firmly clamped between your incisors. You’re even faster after bath time, when we allow you to scamper in the nuddy on the lounge room carpet. And there’s that standing hovering business…three seconds….ten seconds…. before you drop down onto your bottom with a very smug expression on your face.

It has been a big month for you, a month of travel and new faces, and old faces when you don’t expect to see them, which has caused a certain amount of sleeplessness and concern. When you saw your Aunty N for the first time after a few weeks away from Sydney and the Big House you burst into tears and the same thing happened in Newcastle when you saw your grandmother again, even though you adore both these women. I think it was the first time you realised that people go out and come back into your life. You knew these people but you hadn’t seen them for a long time and you had forgotten them until that moment they held you in their arms. It’s a pretty freaky reality jolt for a small person but just one of many your mind will have to wrap itself around.

I myself remember being about eight and having to get a tooth pulled and waiting in the dentist’s chair for the anaesthetic to kick in and thinking to myself…this is now…and this moment will soon be gone forever…and next week this moment will be a memory and so will the tooth pulling moment…and now this moment has gone forever etc etc which was also a freaky reality jolt and funny how all these years later, that recognition is crystal clear in my mind but the tooth pulling that came after is a blur.

Your eleven month birthday was actually a few days ago on the 18th of June but today, the 22nd is my actual birthday.

This morning your father brought you into bed and whispered “happy birthday Mama” and to my surprise you gently kissed me, lovely soft wet kisses, and put your cheek against my face and we lay like that for a moment and it was a beautiful birthday present.

And then you pulled my hair and stuck your fingers in my nose.

I love you.

Your very own
OvaGirlxxxxxx

Rural Lessons

Now that we are living in the country and now that we have finally bought me some Proper Boots, we felt it was time to introduce Tricky to the rural life, ie the life that smiles upon the working dog and fresh air but looks askance at requests for macchiato or organic chicken.

Because we are not ones to do things by halves (and frankly, if Tricky sleeps in for instance, I am inclined to not do them at all) we have visited not one but three farms in the past week. Not simply for Tricky's edification, it's all part of an ongoing arts project that C is running, but it certainly has opened our eyes to the benefits of air seeders, drenchers, and silage, none of which are apparent in the picture below but which I included because I thought it looked quaint and picturesque and exuded a certain rustic charm.

At one farm Tricky got to see chickens. We stood in the door of the skanky floored pen to watch as the farmer shooed them through a cunning little spring loaded hatch in the side of the fence so that they could peck at the sweet grass on the other side.

I stared and wrinkled my nose at the vast floor of trodden in chook poo and Tricky stared and wrinkled his brow, faintly perturbed at the sight of these short strange feathered people with their beady eyes and sharp pointy noses and scaly feet, but also deeply fascinated.

I thought about the chickens my sisters and I nurtured all those many years ago in Penang, and how we had enjoyed their gentle cluckings and funny sideways leapings, right up till the moment they appeared as miniature drumsticks alongside the french onion dip and devils on horseback at one of our parents' authentic, irony-free, 70s parties.

And Tricky laughed, and I smiled, and the farmer shooing the chickens started to tell me a long story about needing a new chook pen because there were far too many chickens and it was all a bit crowded and just then, almost as if someone was listening, someone with a slightly cruel sense of humour I might add, the spring loaded door suddenly snappped down shut on the neck of an unfortunate chicken. Her body flapped about on our side and her head unseen, wailed unhappily on the green green grass side of the hatch and Tricky stared and I said..oh oh dear, I think you better....oooh...oh dear..oops.... and finally the farmer came out with a shirt full of eggs and cursed the hatch and released the chook on her way and it seems there was no harm done.

And, I hate to say this, but I think I will anyway because it might be a milestone event that I look back on in the months to come when I become properly countrified and Do Things Differently...even though I was carrying Tricky in one arm I know I could have released that chook myself but I didn't because firstly I was freaked out by the wierd headless way the body was flapping and writhing and secondly because I didn't want to get poo on my new boots.

And then there were the sheep.

(*cleverly segues to avoid guilty chook inspired ramblings*)

At another farm Tricky was lucky enough to be present for the feeding of the poddy lambs. These are the dear little orphaned lambs, the sweet little woolly motherless lambs, the darling little white faced long legged creatures who must be fed from a bottle and very cute it is to watch, I am told.

Sadly, on this day, we missed this Spectacle Of Extreme Darling Cuddliness because three of the lambs had had their throats ripped out by foxes. This news was delivered to their mother by two of the young children who live on the farm and had been sent out "to feed Poobah and Lucky and Lambert and Rose."

"Only Poobah's alive now Mum," intoned the little boy cheerfully as he handed back the bottles of unsupped milk. Mum and the kids and C went out to inspect the damage but Tricky and I stayed indoors and peeked out the window at the sad little piles of white wool just beyond the wire fence.

"And crows pecked out their eyes," the little girl helpfully added when they returned.

At the end of the week we head oh so briefly back to Sydney and then to Newcastle, my poor storm damaged home town, and then back again to our house in the country for a few days rest in our own beds before we hit the road again.

And are we tired?

Let's just say there's no need to count sheep.

A Perfect Tricky Day

Back in Sydney courtesy of a hire car (damn you anonymous truck with your loosely attached heavy metal twirly thing), we spend a wonderful Sunday walking in the National Park with the Naughty Nephews and their mother.

As is right and proper the day ends with icecream and here is where Tricky has a little fig flavoured taste of Paradise.

Just a tiny spoon, mind you.

But oh dear, he loves the fig icecream, deeply. Oh so deeply. And there is much sorrow when no more tiny spoons are forthcoming.

Followed by Impending Screaming Tomato impression...

And because his parents are weak, spineless jellyfish who know too well what it is to taste of the fig icecream and want more, they succumb...

And bugger the spoon, thankyou very much.

Now, heavily sugared up, Tricky looks for a little wrestlin' action.

Aha, what is that in the distance? Why it's my cousins, the Naughty Nephews, just crying out for a little hell raising...

First, I lunge for the floppy hat of NN3, causing NN1 to scream in terror...

Tee hee.

Next I manage to get in a sly kidney punch to NN2...

Then I do a little stalking round the outside, so I can pick off any stragglers with my four razor sharp teeth...

And finally, a little weeding. I find it relaxes me.