Red Hot Truckin' Mama

And so we're driving driving driving down the freeway towards Newcastle. It's a brief hiatus from Country Living, a quick return to Sydney and a day or two in my home town to catch up with family and friends.



We're going at 110 kms an hour and making pretty good time for once. Tricky is quiet although we're nearing lunchtime and he has the potential to become a Screaming Tomato at any moment, and then I see something on the road ahead of us, something heavy and metal, bouncing and skidding with a twirly tail thing flapping in the breeze from all the 110 km an hour vehicles driving around it.



And then suddenly crack! and smashety smashety tinkle tinkle what the fuck was that and next thing we know we're on the side of the road with watery stuff pouring out of the engine and a cracked bumper bar that's now half hanging off the car.

C thought it had fallen off a truck and indeed there was a truck parked suspiciously on the side of the freeway with a couple of fellows hovering nearby and gauging the traffic so that they could nick out and pick up the evil metal twirly thing. It was a fair way back from us but there were two more trucks stopped just ahead.

I began to steam, just as I was sure our radiator was about to do.

In my mind I put the whole story together...three trucks tooling along the freeway, crass burly drivers chatting on their radios, making jokes about drivers of small cars, counting up their Shell dockets, sipping on their coffee thermi, suddenly a swerve, a bump and whoops there goes the Metal Twirly Thing. And now here we were about to be stuck on the side of the freeway wth a potential Screaming TomatoTime Bomb and late to Newcastle, where my Dad was waiting and where we're always late and originally we looked as if we were actually going to be on time and we only had about 48 hours in the city anyway.... and...

Before I knew what I was doing i was stomping up the freeway with a very cross face.

Excuse me! I shouted up at the first two truck drivers. Are you waiting for that third truck down there? Because a Metal Twirly Thing seems to have fallen off and we've hit it and now our radiator seems to be FUCKED.

They looked down at me, a little surprised. Also, not particularly burly.

Mmm no. We're not with that truck, the first driver explained. See...we're carriers and he's a...well looks like he's a tray top...(or similar)...
And indeed yes, these trucks had a number of cars being "carried" on their double decker trailer thingys. And indeed the third truck was much smaller and had a tray type thing and no cars at all.

Also it looked as if the two fellows had finally picked up the Metal Twirly Thing and were getting back into their truck.

Right I said. And then I added pathetically...we've got a baby in the back and it makes things a bit hard...

Well it wasn't us, said the second driver, sorry love.

I walked back to our car and described the conversation to C who was looking glumly under the bonnet.

Did you really say "fucked"? he asked. I waved that aside.

It's come off that third truck, I said, knowledgeably. That...traytop truck. See, he's not with those other two, they're carriers. And I think he's going to stop for us, I added, as it slowly drove up towards us....

...and then began to pull out onto the freeway. Once again the Cross Face appeared and this time I stomped across to the side of the freeway and energetically waved at the truck.

To my surprise it pulled in again. Yes? asked a pleasant faced young man in the passenger seat.

Did you drop a Metal Twirly Thing on the road? I asked, less beligerently than before. Because we hit it and now our radiator is...failing.

Oh no, said the young man. It wasn't us. But we stopped because it's a truck tie. And they're worth eighty bucks!

Oh, I said. Right. Lucky you.

See ya, he said, and off they went.

I took a breath. In the back of the car Tricky was playing happily with his toes.

Sometimes, I thought, i don't need to be instantly angry about a situation. Sometimes I need to just relax and stop expecting the worst and also do as the Buddhists do and just, you know, pull my head in.

I felt a little light headed, as one does when one realises that one has had a lucky escape, no one was injured or killed after all, and also as one does when one's stereotypical attitudes are shown to be incorrect.


And then, because cars are not C's strongpoint, I followed my natural instincts and rang my Dad.

Letter To A Ten Month Old Nature Lover

Darling Tricky

You are TEN MONTHS OLD. TEN! Count ‘em, that’s all of your chubby brown fingers with the outrageously sharp fingernails! Now we go onto toes and we only get to do TWO of those and then you’re ONE WHOLE YEAR OLD and I spend the entire birthday kissing you all over and weeping with uncontrollable joy and avoiding photographs in case I have a snotty nose.

But let us not speak of that now because just now you are ten months and that in itself is cause for full body kissing and photographs and indeed also snot because you, me and your father have all caught some ghastly coughing, hacking, nose dripping chest heaving viral thing.

You have now officially Moved To The Country. In many ways, this is not dissimilar to your life in the city. You are still living in a share household, your parents are still ridiculously busy, they still get your meal times arse about (but less so) and you still have to gently remind them with your Screaming Tomato Impression.

You don’t have your cousins to knock about with and this is pretty sad really because you’re just getting old enough to really enjoy they’re company (although of course your love affair with Naughty Nephew the 3rd has pretty much continued unabated since…well since prebirth really when he was fascinated by your in-utero hijinks). But you do have the attention and adoration of our new house-mates, HRS and D. Both are in their early twenties so they’ve got all that… stuff, that…what do you call it, it seems so foreign to me now…oh yes. Energy.

You also have a backyard with that green pokey-out-the-ground stuff. You enjoy sitting and crawling and grabbing handfuls of the green pokey stuff. You also like very much to look at the birds. And the leaves.

In fact, You plus Nature. BFF.

I am less friendly with Nature since I encountered strange and enormous king hell moths in a public toilet at a railway station on our way to this new postcode. They looked like fat, blind, beakless sparrows. With feelers. They were also furry and motley and clinging silently to nearly every available surface which causes great unease as one tinkles and tries not to in any way disturb them. I suspect I was being punished for an evil moth destroying incident in my past. HRS took one look at them and got straight back in the car, and because she hasn’t given birth over a three day period and thus owns a Bladder Of Steel was able to wait for a service station loo at the next town along the highway.

This month I admit I have been (ahem) introducing you to television. I expect to read these words in five years time and regret them deeply but some mornings I put on a video of The Wiggles, or Teletubbies and I dance and smile and sing Hot Potato Hot Potato and Toot Toot Chugga Chugga Big Red Car next to the screen and you just look at me like I’m a fucking idiot.

You stand holding onto the table I have cunningly placed in front of the tv to stop you touching the buttons and sometimes you deign to watch some small snippet – TinkyWinky wandering around with a cloud on his head, Jeff – asleep, again! But then seconds later you will drop down and crawl off stalking human prey, D or HRS or Dada, living, breathing, bleeding entertainment slaves that do all the singing and dancing and oh oh-ing of those flat 2 dimensional characters on the small screen but also pick you up and read you stories and give you finger food and take you out to look at Nature. You do like sucking on the power cord of the video player, though, so perhaps that’s progress.

Ten months means you have taken to finger foods with all the zeal of a person who has sprouted four teeth! That’s two down the bottom and two big muthas at the top. I’d take a photo of them but it’s very hard to force you to reveal the big mutha teeth. Still, you enjoy peeled fruit and cold broccoli and pizza crusts and one particularly bad evening when we were driving back from Melbourne after seeing the opening of my play and had failed to pack enough food for your dinner, you enjoyed a damp chunk of old panini which I had wrapped in a napkin the previous night and shoved in my handbag. Why I would do this is anyone’s guess, it’s not like we were kipping in a gutter and this would be our last meal for the week, but thank god I did because it released us from the grip of the Screaming Tomato for at least five precious minutes and by that time I had discovered (you see, there really is a god) a sealed package of mashed pumpkin and corn which I was able to feed you reasonably soon after the panini dregs and then you fell asleep, although not before shrieking YOU PEOPLE WITH YOUR INABILITY TO PROPERLY PLAN MY MENUS, YOU SUCK ARSE in Screaming Tomatoese.

You now use your fingers to point at baby bunting and the little black cat in your new favourite book Peach Pie Pear Plum (or whatever the hell it’s called). I have also been reading “Hairy McLairy” to you rather a lot. This is a book I seem to have loved for a great many years and to some of the more critical in our new house it even seems my sole purpose for giving birth to you was to have a captive audience for my rendition of Hairy McLairy. Top of the pops is still “My body plays music…” which always ends with a lively cha cha cha on your new maracas. HRS has adapted this tune so that the beginning goes “My parents are mental…” but she’s one of those cruel young folk with exacting standards and I know you’ll take revenge on my behalf by, say, dragging one of those hell moths in from the back yard and leaving it in her bedroom.

Oh my sweet bubba. How many times a day do your father and I look at each other and say “I love him so much.” You seem so patient and so gracious and so incredibly good humoured about the whole New Home, No Regular Meal Times, Who Are These People, Why Can’t I Suck That Power Cord scenario. Time seems to move so fast, one minute you were a squashy soft bundle who snuggled into your father every morning for a few hours extra sleep, and now you seem to be half a minute off standing by yourself and then walking and then getting a tattoo. And every half smile is a blessing, every soft wet kiss is a glimpse of heaven, every snuffly snotty laugh is music to our ears.

HRS is right, we are mental, but that’s because we’re your parents and we’re seventy sorts of smitten with you, our darling tricky boy.

Happy ten months.

Your Very Own

Ova Girl
xxxxx

Love

Dear Coffee

I love you. There I've said it and I don't care who knows. This morning I felt like such crap. Tricky was up five times during the night and I fed him every time because he has this horrid snotty nose and chesty business and I thought it was good to let him suck and also because we have people staying in the bedroom next to him and man he can cry.

And also, I was feeling the heavy burden of grant applications and manuscript corrections and changing dates for plotting meetings of tv shows I am writing (actually just one tv show, multiple meetings but one show) and also am a bit snotty myself.

But lo, I make one cup of your fragrant self and I feel magnificent! I ran skippingly down the Pubic Hair Hallway, I brushed my teeth with aplomb. (And also toothpaste) I made my necessary phone calls and I did it without fear! (To my agent, so she can deal with the multiple meeting scenario) and all this because of you, coffee, dear coffee, tasty coffee.

You stain my teeth and you give me smelly breath but I wear these things like a badge of pride because you give me back MY LIFE. Energy surges through me like wild salmon swimming upstream in a turbulent river (no idea where this stupid metaphor is going) and ends in a pool of...Getting Things Done.

Now of course I have wasted precious precious Coffee Energy writing this stupid letter but I don't care. I LOVE YOU. Do you hear me, crazy brown brew? I love your shiny beans! I love your oily residue! I even love that it takes fucking forever to make just one cup of you because C hates the plunger and insisted on only bringing the tiny stovetop coffee-maker and also because he thinks you should only grind the coffee just before consuming hence we have the coffee grinder and a massive bag of beans.

It doesn't matter. You are still beautiful. YOU COMPLETE ME.

Love OvaGirl
xxxxxx

The most horrible motherhood moment so far

Living in a Different House means Different Bathroom means Different Bath Tub and, in this case, means Different Taps, aka Taps That Are Fucked.

When I say 'fucked' what I actually mean is: taps that are wrongly positioned so that the tap marked Hot actually produces cold water and the tap marked Cold actually produces hot.

I think you can see where this is going.

Bath time with Tricky is fun, he has a select range of floaty bath toys and a penchant for making with the kickaboo legs. Oh yes it’s all fun and games and chirruping giggles. C and I fight over who gets to have a bath with him and C usually wins because the combination of Bath and Milk Bar is just too much fun for young Mr Trickster and it becomes tiring for me to stop him both drowning and divebombing my nipples.

But on this night, this first night, this bath night in the Different Bath, I got in, holding my baby, and as I sat down and dipped his toes in the water I thought “hmmm, this water might be a bit too warm for him, and I wonder if that was too hot on his toes, I better put his foot under the cold tap just in case.”

And then came that moment I will remember forever as in one quick movement I turned on the tap marked Cold and held his tiny little foot under the stream...

...of scalding hot water.

As soon as I did it, I realised I'd got the taps wrong and as I pulled his foot out he started to scream. I threw on the cold tap (marked Hot) and shoved his foot under a stream of cold water and now he really did scream.

And so did I, but only on the inside, on the outside I was saying in a calming voice: oh darling, I’m sorry darling, it’s alright…and alternatively calling for C to come quickly, come quickly oh please hurry…

It was so quick thank God that there was not even a red mark, and once I had put Tricky onto the milkbar for a bit he seemed happy.

And C, with a shifter and a grim look on his face, exchanged the taps to their rightful place so that now Cold will always be cold and Hot will always be hot.

We even stayed in our tepid bathwater and played with the floaty dolphin for a little while longer before getting out and continuing on with the bath/bed ritual. And in the morning there would be no sign of that horrible horrible moment.

But all through the night I kept seeing my hand pushing his foot under that scalding stream of water and later, while doing the washing up and feeling the hot hot hot water on my hands, I cried.

Denial may well be a river in Egypt but it’s also a creek in Western NSW.

Hello.

Guess what?

We’ve moved Six to Eight Hours Drive away from where we lived the last time I posted here.

That's right!

I now live in... THE COUNTRY.

(*faints at realisation and then bravely picks self up*)


It’s still shocking to me too. And it goes like this:

C has this job.

It’s based in The Country for two years.

This means he’s based in The Country for two years.

Ergo, his wife and child are too.

When I say The Country, I should specify this means Country Town, not Isolated Homestead Surrounded By Dried Up Dams And Cow Skeletons, but as part of this job he (and we) will be visiting the above homesteads, discussing said dams and no doubt swooning over said skeletons.

When I was a kid, my dad was in the airforce and this meant that my family moved every two or three years. In one memorable year I moved from Penang, to Sydney, to Hoppers Crossing (you’ve never heard of it? Google and see!).

We moved from school to school and while that was a pain in terms of uniforms and exotic animals (hello, monkey raid) and saying goodbye, it was good too because if you made a dick of yourself at one school you always had the chance to start afresh.

But, being a grownup, it’s not quite as appealing.

There are all the same problems: the uniform (“I don’t have proper boots” I wailed to C, “I can’t move to The Country without proper boots!”), the exotic animals (Enormous Moths The Size Of Sparrows) and the saying goodbye (Naughty Nephews and their parents held Cricket Bat guard of honour as we sailed out through the gates of the Big House).

And of course now, as a sensible grownup, I realize that everyone makes a dick of themselves, constantly, and you never really get the chance to start again, you just have to get on with things and, ahem, love the dick within.

We are living in a big big house (no relation to the Big House sadly) with a garden, many bedrooms and wall to wall carpet.

Tricky especially enjoys this last bit because he now can do Proper Crawling and he slowly stalks up and down the carpeted hallway like a tiny Bantha.

I was going to say a tiny hairless Bantha but it seems the people who rented this house before us didn’t believe in vacuuming. They did, however, apparantly believe in rolling about naked on the carpet.

Let me say there is nothing that makes me run faster for the vacuum cleaner than the sight of my smiling baby coated in strange pubic hair.

You'll Never Walk Alone

So there I was standing around at a function and amidst all the serious discussion of Art and Culture, three of us grabbed a drink and peeled off to form our own discussion group.

It’s the broken sleep, one girl said and we all nodded and cradled our precious precious glasses of white wine. But it does get better, she added and we all brightened a little.

It really throws your body around, I said, it took me months to get over it. In fact I’m still not over it, I’m still not like I was before I was pregnant.

We all sighed at the truth of this and sipped at our wine and then as if at an unspoken command we put down our glasses and surreptitiously lifted our shirts to compare pouchy stomachs.

But I think most of all, it’s the sex that suffers, said the third girl and we all groaned and our faces dropped and we drained our glasses and looked around urgently for a refill.
But it’s worse for me, she added. Because my girlfriend and I were together for nine years before the baby was born so we were already suffering from Lesbian Bed Death and now it’s a hundred times worse.

There was an odd silence as the drinks waiter appeared at our shoulders and caught these last few words.

Fill her glass first, I said.

Letter To A Nine Month Old Clicking Beetle

Dear Tricky

“He’s now been out as long as he was in,” people say to me but they forget that you were nearly a month early and so in fact, my darling one, you’ve been out for quite a bit longer.

This month I am completely and utterly besotted with you, not that I’m not every month, just that this month so many tiny and enormous steps have been strode by you along the road to Not Being A Baby Anymore.

Small things, looks and gestures and knowing smiles. One day this month I woke up and thought for the first time that you understand what we say to you, you just don’t want to say anything back for now.

You like to grab toys that contain jingly bells or rattles, one in each hand (in this morning’s case a blue striped monkey and a multicoloured whale) and shake the bejesus out of them as you bounce to your favourite cd which happens to be Beautiful Creatures - Children’s Songs Of Africa.

This cd is on equally high rotation along with U2, Mozart clarinet and bassoon concertos, Paris Combo and Charlie Parker, but the song that runs constantly through my head is not I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For, say, or Je Suis Un If, but Imvubu The Happiest Hippo (which comes with helpful post-song disclaimer and warning that actually Hippos ARE dangerous, so if you see one, move very quickly away).

We tell you we love you constantly but now we also tell you “Don’t Touch” as you reach out for those tempting power boards and that overwhelmingly delicious taste sensation: the pedal on the kitchen bin.

Sadly, “Don’t” and “ Touch” were apparently my first words after Mama and Dada, which I think says so much about my personality. Your father and I are determined that you will not follow in my paranoid overly sensitive footsteps, yet also not be electrocuted nor succumb to salmonella. It’s a complicated dance.

Your increasing heaviness, your strength, your mocking laughter and wry smiles at our stupid schemes for the future and excursions to Ikea remind us of how you are ever growing and changing. The tongue clicking for instance, useful in several languages I believe, including Clicking Beetle-ese. Hilarious, especially when parents click back.

Thank god for night, for those times when you wake at five am and I pick you up all sleepy and squashy in your wearable sleeping bag and nurse you and watch the fringe of your long dark eyelashes (when I can keep my own eyes open) in the faint light through the curtains and we bob and sigh and snuggle with just the sound of you drinking and me yawning until finally I tip you back into nod. And this morning, when you woke mid nap and stood in your cot, shouting for me, with your face all red and crumpled and your eyes still half asleep and I picked you up and you tried to burrow (tick-like it has to be said, fingernails again) into my neck…

You climb and you stand and you reach and when you’re not quite tall enough you get up on your tippee toes and then we stare at you and muse about whether you will be a dancer and if we do enroll you in dancing will the other kids call you a nancy boy and bash the tripe out of you… (solution: enroll in dancing and martial arts)

Twinkle Twinkle is our song of the month and I firmly feel that you can do the diamond in the sky bit you just don’t feel like it at this point and fair enough too.

We have been trialling you in your port-o-cot in…gasp…a room other than our bedroom, aka the spare room, and the increase in quality of lifestyle is enormous. At night, I can turn on the bedroom light, speak in other than a whisper and, shockingly, watch tv (not that I do).

More importantly we all seem to be sleeping which is always a great relief. However this means your sleep patterns more directly affect the rest of the Big House, you are for instance sleeping in the room beside your biggest cousin, Naughty Nephew the 1st. A couple of days after you slept in there for the first time (with accompanying waking at 4 and 5 etc) I bailed up NN1 and asked him if he was disturbed by your presence next door. He looked at me thoughtfully and then said…no, I don’t hear anything. I could have hugged and kissed him except he’s just about 10 and you don’t do that to Just About 10’s.

This has been a lovely month for you being one of the boys, aka your cousins. NN3 comes up nearly every morning before school to play with you, or perhaps to play beside you at times. You laugh happily and chase him and think he is the funniest thing on two long spindly legs and you are very probably right. NN2 read a story to you the other night before bed which was another lovely Cousin Moment. And indeed, during the day or evening when you are asleep and they shout and call and race up and down the hall, oddly, you rarely stir. You seem to know their voices which is very nice indeed.

That Separation Anxiety thing began last month, that time when babies realize that they are separate beings to their mothers, and then worry and fret when they leave the room.

No one told me that mothers suffer from it too. I have now realised that you are a separate being, you’re no longer part of me and I can’t be there for you and with you every step of your way, and what will that do for you and what does that do for me thinking it?

I lost my own mother at 25 and that hurt and still does, but my youngest sister was only 14 and I see how the scars run through so much of her life. Two clouds I have at the back of my head, Mum’s breast cancer, and MS – my very own, no known family history, look ma I made it myself disease. I try not to let these encroach, let them become a source of Separation Anxiety but the truth is they are there and when I get cysts in my breast or a virus knocks me down for a day and I get tingly feet, that’s when it kicks in, breaks through, those dark clouds that I can’t quite ignore.

But I do. Mostly. There’s so much more for me to see - you standing and you bouncing and you crawling and laughing and clicking and clapping and you not quite doing the diamond in the sky for Twinkle Twinkle. Your funny wet open mouth kisses (at least I think they’re kisses, it could be just you trying to put my chin in your mouth), your two bottom teeth and your soft fat legs and arms.

You are my joy, my sweet baby, my currant bun, my clicking beetle, my screaming tomato (still, now and then, like when we miss serving you dinner on time) my tiny gleaming diamond in a darkly uncertain sky. My son.

Thankyou for these nine beautiful, blissful, perfect months.

With all my love. Together. And separately.

Your very own
Ova Girl

Dum de dee...

As I write this Tricky is chasing Naughty Nephew the 3rd around his dad's chair. Well, when I say 'chasing', I mean of course the patented frog hop that Tricky seems to have mastered. It's a strange method of locomotion and when other people see it they often stare because frankly it looks wierd as all get out. It's the kind of action that only a baby or a very very wiry gymnast can do. It's all about the tummy muscles it seems. Kid has abs of steel and he's not a year old.

Things are trotting on here although it's patentedly obvious I have been abusing my poor blog. Time is such a rare commodity these days. Sandwiched between bed and bath and food and walk and play and work. The latter - has eased off thank God.

My editor rang me about the book while I was in Newcastle last week. Unfortunately my mobile phone was plugged into the charger on the kitchen cabinet and Tricky had decided that that exact moment was the right time for a feed. Cue me topless on the kitchen floor with one hand holding the phone and the other propping up baby. She's happy with my rewrites, yay hooray, "you will," she said "have a book before you know it."

But in the meantime there's bed and bath and food and walk and play...

S e a s o n s

The other day it was hot and sunny and then overnight the rain started falling along with the temperature and then daylight savings was over and so was summer.

Except it wasn't the other day, it was a couple of weeks ago. And since then it's got hot again and then cold, and now it's Easter.

I don't know why it is that I can never remember this time of year, the crisp brittleness of the autumnal sky and the golden glow on the trees.

It always comes and I find myself saying 'ah yes, there it is, it's this season, this time of year... ' and I think how beautiful this city is, between seasons.

The book is in, at least for this part of the process, more changes to come of course.

Other writing, a short play in the style of my london compadre sbs's miniaturist phenomenon (more seasons) on at a theatre nearby, which went very nicely indeed. Another play, a bit longer, about the riots that happened on a beach. And, funny this, an episode of a popular tv show. Things we do.

And it's also the anniversary of my mother's death which is another kind of season too.

If my mother was here now I would ask her about baby hair and spit.

The other day i found myself licking my fingers and scooting Tricky's locks first up into curls and then down into smooth waves and suddenly remembering hearing my mother talking to someone about my hair, my curls, which were either all thanks to my grandma's spit or else had survived despite it. At the time of hearing I think I was a teeny thing but I felt my mother's disapproval.

And then, a connected memory, on my grandmother's lap, with her fingers damply patting at my hair.

The thing is, I'm pretty sure my grandmother was still a smoker then. Ew. I'm not sure I'd be happy if my smoking mother-in-law was spitting on Tricky's head... (not that she smokes. or spits)

Was the spit meant to curl or straighten?

Neither of them alive to tell.

Letter To An Eight Month Old Water Baby

Dear Tricky

This month you have spent much of your time on your belly scooting around the floor. It looks like you might not bother with the crawling stage, the belly scooting is such fun and so fast. In fact you might miss the walking stage as well and just go straight to the pogo dancing stage or perhaps the legs in the air skanking stage.

Thus will your love of insane bouncing up and down and fast music come together.

You have been spending a lot of time with your dada this month while I have been tearing out my hair and tippy tapping at the computer. These have been lovely days for you both, hanging out at the local ocean baths and swimming.

Or at least, he swims, backwards, and you hover on his chest and happily spit out seawater. You have become a tiny little celebrity at those baths, people approach your father and ask for his secret because their child only has to look at the ocean and they start screaming.

I’m sure the regular visits help as does your father’s patience and determination that you learn to love the water and learn how to swim. Your mother on the other hand, while also loving the water, is afraid of it and sometimes would rather sit on the sand with a book then go for a swim. Most days in fact. I blame those two near drowning experiences as a child and my lack of proper, consistent swimming lessons.

Anyway, you, your father, water. A truly lovely combination. Especially because you come home completely knackered and usually sleep very well that night.

You sit up now, easily, playing with your toys, but you can also just as easily roll to one side and pick up a book. We try and read to you everyday and your favourite is currently entitled “Commotion In The Ocean”.


I’ll be glad when this fad passes. I’m not expecting Encyclopedia Britannica but geez, talk about factual errors?

The crab likes walking sideways
And I think the reason why
Is to make himself look sneaky
And pretend that he’s a spy.

When have crabs held any ambitions for espionage? What sort of testing was done to come to this conclusion? Is this finding published anywhere? (Apart from in Commotion In The Ocean?)

It goes on and on, scurrilous comments about jelly fish (“loves to jiggle”) octopus (eight arms purportedly to “hold all my children and tickle each one on the tummy.”) and swordfish (alleged to enjoy chasing small fishes and when hungry to “skewer a few on my sword.”).

I have been curious about the book reading, which we do everyday, because to be honest, although you sit quietly for a while, as a book is being read, you haven’t seemed to enjoy it as such. Large books have worked well, perhaps because of the large bright pages, perhaps because the size provides a useful barrier for trapping you on my lap and preventing you pitching forward onto the floor.


I use silly voices and hand gestures and point out the pictures but it’s actually only been in the last few days that I have noticed you responding to things on the page. This morning you saw that flimsy missive of lies, aka Commotion In The Ocean, and you began to gurgle and reach for it and when I picked it up and showed it to you, you laughed. Then you sat very still as I read it, silly voices and all. You stroked at the dolphin, you shrank from the shark, you giggled when tickled ala octopus offspring on the tummy.

I think that maybe my determination with the reading is like your father’s with the swimming. I love that we are each sharing something special with you, teaching you and guiding you.

And although I go swimming with you too, and your father also reads to you, it’s nice to have an activity that maybe one day will be a lovely memory for you… “when I was little my dad and I used to…” “when I was little my mum and I used to”…

I hope you love reading as much as I do.
As much as your dad loves the ocean.
As much as we both love you.

And that’s a lot.

Love,

your very own

OvaGirl

xxxxx

Better

Things have become way way waaaay more manageable thanks to the following:

Rescue remedy

Acupuncture session

More sleep

Whinging to writer friend who then gave stern advice re prioritising and knocking over website stuff ("which should be skeletal not agonised over and all overwritten to buggery") before attacking book stuff "which is what you want to be doing".

Dinner party with grownup type conversation about art and politics and hilarious George Bush joke told by precocious 11 year old which for the life of me I can't remember. Something about the definition of tragedy. Meanwhile, baby looked after by sister in law N who was up every half hour as he squarked.

Weekend quicky type stand up sex in the bathroom while baby having nap.

Coming up with not one but four potential book titles and emailing them in on deadline only to discover Editor is away at conference till tomorrow.

C deciding he will not be going away again without me and Tricky and he will take baby with him EVERY DAY so that I can work. Hooray! More quicky stand up sex for you!

And for some reason, the other thing that helped was taking out Naughty Nephew 3rd (he with the once fluffy chicken hair-now buzzcut smooth, and the big blue saucer like eyes) for his birthday outing over the weekend.

His birthday is on Wednesday and when the girl at the teddybear factory asked how old he was he said, quite truthfully, 4.

But you will be 5 on your birthday, I said.

Oooooh yes that's right, fiiiiive, he smiled winningly, earning himself TWO TEDDY BEAR STICKERS for being so gorgeous.

I remember when the family first came to Sydney, from London via the rest of the world, and NN3 was a small tot-in-arms, sitting in highchairs with bowls of avocado and mashed banana, gurgling happily and being bathed in plastic containers.

I know that very soon the time for teddy bears and stuffed toys will be gone. NN3 started school this year after all and he is all about his Pokemon cards and tennis and also, humiliatingly, beating me in chess! (Yet with the most charming smile.)

But on this day, he carefully chose his bear (actually a penguin) and entered into all the hoo hah of stuffing it and cuddling it to make sure it had just enough fluff inside, and then inserting a love heart and making a wish...all done very solemnly and enthusiastically as his uncle and I stood to one side, holding his little cousin, and squeaking with the cuteness of it all.

Later we sat around as he ate an enormous iced donut, waiting till he was half way through to remark "Mummy doesn't let me have these." About two seconds later he slipped backwards off his stool and hit his head on the floor.

I grabbed for him and half caught him but it didn't save us from tears and I held him close and rubbed his head and generally cuddled him and made soothing noises till he stopped and resumed donut duties.

It occurred to me that I was much more comfortable cuddling him now.

Not that I wouldn't have comforted him before, just that it would have been a bit more patting and shushing rather than automatically grabbing and cuddling him close and not only that being confident that soon it would be ok.

I was aware of the sensation but then also the accompanying thought: that's what mothers do.

And it was nice.

But I did feel guilty about the donut.

Insert Title Here

When did I first want to write?

I wondered about this hazily, at some ungodly not meant to be up hour of the…morning? Night? Fuck knows. For some reason all that great sleep training I did weeks ago has gone to pot. Something about all that physical and mental development in that teeny little body is affecting his sleep.

I was one of those kids who could read before they started school and, due to the wisdom of the education system, I was hence also one of those kids forced to sit quietly next to the non-reading kid beside me as they struggled through the individual letters that made up the enthralling tales of Dick and Jane and Baby Sue. I distinctly remember getting into trouble for trying to pry open the pages and see what happened next.

A couple of years later, different school, I was told that I was a “pest” because I finished my books quicker than any other kid and the teacher had to keep going back to the reading room to get me new books.

That was probably the same year that I got into trouble for trying to “running write”. We were all about printing our letters and I tried to write my name the same way I had seen my mum write, all curly and joined up. For some reason my attempt seemed to infuriate the teacher.
“Look!” she shouted as she flounced up to the blackboard. “Can you write this?” And in a horribly symbolic moment she wrote MY NAME in huge letters on the blackboard in cursive script. I stared, speechless, horrified and guilt stricken for being so terribly naughty that my name was being written on the board. “Can you write this? No, you can’t. YOU CAN’T. So stop wasting everyone’s time and PRINT PROPERLY.”

When I replay this moment in my head, sitting behind the seven year old version of myself, I shudder and then I get up and grab hold of that teacher and rip off her head. It makes me so fucking angry because I know how hard, how difficult is to write, and moments like that scar a kid, they don’t just perpetuate a lack of confidence or self esteem they actually kick start them into being. They are the poisonous seeds of self doubt.

At the age of thirty eight those seeds have well and truly born fruit.

As I type this, Tricky has just fallen asleep for the night which means I stop mothering for a short time and start writing. And it’s hard. I’m fighting for time here, to write and think and imagine, and that’s on top of all the regular stupid fears. It’s not his fault obviously. He’s not the teacher who told me I couldn’t write my own name, he’s not that first teacher who punished me from trying to read to the end of the book. He’s my bouncing, currant bun headed, creepy crawling, trying to suck on electrical cords, baby.

And man, he makes the writing hard.

This is a hell deadline month for me. Every Monday from now till April I have a deadline – title for book, then first draft of a new website on playwriting for young people, then final draft of book and then final draft of website. At the end of this month I have a new ten minute play on at a local theatre and mid month I start work on a new play with young people in Newcastle. And amidst all this, C is going to be away again for work.

Friends offer to take the baby but I feel guilty for being freelance and then taking on too much. Except that’s the point with freelance, you sometimes have heaps on and then you go for ages twiddling your thumbs and redoing your cv and writing yet another fucking play (and this is a whole other post, my building rage for the theatre industry and its attendant gatekeepers)…

The answer to that first question is that I can’t remember the time when I decided I wanted to write.

I just know that there’s never been a time when I haven’t.

No. I don't like it.

The new blogger I'm talking about. Where does it get off forcing me to change L'Eggs Up to the NEW blogger when I was perfectly happy with the old blogger. Previously I had a choice as to whether I wanted to change but today, no, no choice at all. And why is newer better anyway?

See this is just like my so called new mobile phone. C changed our phone plan and so we were offered free upgraded phones. I have barely managed to learn all the doodads on my old phone, but no suddenly I have to use new spanking completely different brand phone with irritating whistling oaf ring and stupid side volume buttons that I press whenever I try to answer the phone. So then I end up shouting 'hello' 'hello I can't hear you...wait wait' as I try to push both little buttons (because of course there are two to confuse me).

The only good thing about the new phone is that it has camera phone on it. C is away for a week, much to his distress, he has only spent 2 nights away from Tricky before and he misses him terribly (bugger me, no not really, he misses me too but Tricky is cuter). Today, I rang C using the stupid irritating phone but using the cunning camera call thingy. He was able to see Tricky's sweet little currant bun face and I was able to see C's bed hair and too much red wine from the night before pallid skin.

Sing It Baby

You can put coins in my slot and you can take them out.


Who sings this?

If you guessed a perky bargirl on a tabletop in Manilla you would be wrong and also frankly go and look in the mirror and take a good hard look at yourself. But if you guessed a pink plastic moneybox in the shape of a pig, one that not only sings but comes with a hoard of plastic “coins” you would be right.

Along with those other milestones of Sitting Up, and Sliding on his Tummy, and realizing that Mummy’s Nipples can be Cruelly Wrenched When she is Looking the Other Way, Tricky has reached another important milestone – that of receiving a Very Annoying Toy.

This VAT sings when you depress its snout and chimes when you drop aforementioned “coins” into the ample “slot”. It also counts, snorts, sneezes and giggles. Mercifully it can be turned off.

It seemed merely a very silly song at first, one that made us smirk. But one weekend we accidentally left the VAT downstairs amongst the chess boards and packs of cards and other playthings of the Naughty Nephews. Because children have a natural affinity for things that annoy adults they gravitated towards it, played with it, AND LEARNED ITS ANNOYING LITTLE TUNE.

I AM A PIGGY BANK!
I HAVE A PIGGY SNOUT!
YOU CAN PUT COINS IN MY SLOT AND YOU CAN TAKE THEM OUT!
THE COINS GO IN THE SLOT!
CAN YOU HEAR THEM DROP?!
COME ON AND OPEN UP THE DOOR AND WE CAN PLAY SOME MORE!

You cannot imagine the horror of hearing this sung loudly in unison by three Naughty Nephews.

To be truthful it was only Naughty Nephew the 2nd who continued to sing it over and over, but he also had the accent down pat. As a result the VAT very nearly went the way of all loud annoying toys: a spell in the freezer.

But in other news, the book is in. YAY! Notes have been given and A Meeting had. Now for some rewrites and also some taking out of a few rude words. (The fuck?) Oh, and a title. Because it won't be L'Eggs Up And Laughing. It will be something else.
(Please don't pout. That doesn't help)

When will it be published?

Well here’s the funny thing. The editor and I were talking about it and she said February probably. For some reason I thought it was going to be way further in the distance and so February seemed kind of close.

Then she emailed back and said no, actually September. And that brought me down a bit because I thought…but September is so far away. Tricky will be over 2 by then and also of course we will have a second child.

It wasn’t till today’s meeting with another editor when she said no, September THIS YEAR, that I perked up because that seemed very jolly and close indeed.

And then, I realised the bizarre train of thought that had wound itself up in that publishing date. We will have a second child.

What I should have thought was we have a frozen embryo and because time is ticking on for me and my uterus that we would have at least had a go at bunging it in and embarking on that Great Big Fertility Ride again.

How could I have forgotten?

How could I just assume?

Was I insane?

The mind, I decided, protects its own. Just as the intensity of childbirth trickled out like water through the sleep deprived sieve of my mind, so too, it seems, did the memory of daily injections, bloodtests, dildocams and betas.

In that moment I was treating myself as... normal.

We will have a second child.

The line sings itself in the back of my mind, over and over, annoyingly persistent, smugly optimistic.

And it doesn’t take this half-Filipina bar girl more than the flick of a coin to realize that it’ll take more than a spell in the freezer to shut it the fuck up.

Letter to a Seven Month Old Flying Dinosaur

Dear Tricky

I begin this letter to commemorate your seventh month by noting that although our loungeroom is littered with sitting devices for you, your current favourite place to recline (apart from in the arms of your many slaves) in is a cardboard box. Here you lean back and view the world, or abuse Mr Caterpillar or sometimes just have a refreshing suck on the cardboard sides.

This month has been all about the crawling or at least not the crawling per se but the preparation leading up to it, the stretching and the reaching and the tapping of feet against the floor and the rocking.

The first time we saw you on your hands and knees rocking with an intriguing expression on your face we hailed you as a genius child whose physical development was far beyond any child ever yet born and then a few minutes later we changed your nappy and realised that you were actually just working an enormous smelly poo through your system.

Which is, in its own way, cause for celebration but perhaps not for cake and party hats.

At one point I watched as you got onto your hands and knees and then, because you’re not sure what comes next, you lifted your butt high in the air so you were on hands and feet doing the down dog yoga pose and then you sort of flipped yourself to one side so you were half sitting half reclining.

Wow, I thought, that’s new. And then I thought: he hasn’t fallen on his face yet and I swear no sooner had the words gone through my mind then you fell with a splat on your cute little button nose. And lo the screaming.

But then, in a little show of how things change so quickly these days, in between starting this letter a few days ago and now, you have started speeding about on your tummy. You drag yourself on your arms and kick with your legs and slide forward and away you go. It is an exciting time and also a time for putting on stair gates because we can’t keep you trapped in the playpen all day.

All this month, while I have been writing my book, you have been gallivanting with your father. I say gallivanting, he says Important Meetings (which often take place in coffee shops). The first time he took you out, with a little lunch packed for you, I felt very strange indeed. Previously the most you could be taken away from me was four hours and you would have morphed into Screaming Tomato when you return. But now, you go, fortified with mashed potato and pumpkin, and strained fruit with rice cereal, and your own little cup and you can be away with your father all day, meeting to your hearts content. I do know that sometimes he takes you swimming at the baths and you both love doing that.

I have come to realize that you are not the most smiley baby in the world. Others your age are gappy grinners and they radiate their sunny little personalities everywhere they go. You on the other hand are quiet and watchful. You observe things, with a faint frown creasing your forehead as if in your mind you can’t quite believe this world and all its weird shit.

People stop and smile at you and make with the goo goo noise and you gaze at them, unsmilingly, almost to the point of being creepy and then you give them one tiny little smile, not even a smile, more a very slight bending of the corners of your mouth and a little flutter of your eyelashes and they go BANANAS.

Sometime this month we were in a café (having a Meeting) with your friend Annie and she took you for a little walk about because you were getting bored. There was another baby in the café and she wandered by in case you and the other Baby wanted to have a little chat.

As soon as the other baby saw you its sweet little cherubic face lit up with the sort of wattage that could power a city and it gaped and grinned and gurgled and all those other words starting with g because it recognised in you a kindred spirit and an equally small human being. Annie smiled at the other Baby’s glee and then she glanced at you and nearly coughed up her latte because you were not smiling at the baby, you were not grinning or gurgling. Instead you were staring with a faint horror, a sort of “why is it doing that, its scaring me” expression. In the end Annie took you away because she saw your bottom lip quivering which she interpreted as acute embarrassment for your peer.

However reticent you may be in the public arena, though, you always smile for us.

Whether it’s the moment when your father brings you home after a hard day of coffee and you spy me rolling about on my office chair, or when I take you out of the bath with daddy and then roll you in your towel on the bed. You laugh like a joyful baby pterodactyl, all squeals and harsh cries and calls for raw flesh.

This morning I watched as your father danced you about the room. You were laughing your pterodactyl laugh and I clapped as the two of you tangoed right up to me and then suddenly I started to cry.

It took me by surprise, I could not believe how happy I was in that moment. And then your dad sat next to me and he was crying too and then we had one of those three way hugs and you just kept laughing and gurgling at your ridiculously soft and soppy parents.

And just writing that word ‘parents’ is making me cry again.

Love

Your very own

OvaGirl
xxxxxx

Some stuff

UG! I have been submerged for what seems like ages now, tippy tapping away on the book based on this blog plus extra bonus stories about me and my family. The deadline is next week and so far I think it's going well. C is being delightful and takes Tricky away for hours during the day which helps alot. Tricky being on solids is also helpful because I suck at pumping (strange juxtaposition of terms there.)

We have had a few days in Newcastle which was jolly as ever. Grumpy Grandad, now living in a retirement home that we are not allowed to call a retirement home referring to it only as The Lodge)visited and gave Tricky the kangaroo keyring he was given by The Lodge nurses on Australia Day.

In a sort of sad reflective moment he unwound it from his walker so I could hang it on the stroller. The kangaroo held an Australian flag and my Grandad said that was good because "IT'S NEVER TOO SOON TO WAVE THE FLAG" (yes, even The Lodge can't stop him speaking in capitals). Of course, after he left I removed the little Australian flag and threw it away. I did this because I think there are enough dickheads out there waving the flag in a very strident and unpleasant manner, exhorting passersby to 'kiss the flag', and usually drunk, sun burned and violent. But also the pole part of the flag was a lethally sharpened toothpick and I don't think we give those to babies anymore.

Despite this, GG was lovely. Flaky and shouty but lovely, referring to Tricky as mate and offering him a ride on his walker or a slide on his walking stick. This time he was wearing longer pants which was a good effort but sadly still failed to hide his catheter. I noticed when flicking through all the christmas photos my dad took and helpfully burned onto a cd for me that The Catheter is apparant in every single photo that also features my Grandad. Like Cate and Andrew, you just can't separate those two.

While in Newcs I also told my Dad about the car exploding out front and failing to wake us up. We have since learned that when the police, ambos and fire engines arrived they didn't actually have sirens going (why? is it really that common in our suburb??) but even so you would think the sound of windows blowing out, petrol igniting, roaring flames and people standing on the footpath saying "oh my god" a lot would have disturbed our slumber. My Dad then reminded me that last year the HOUSE next door to theirs was firebombed and yet my dad and stepmother slept through the whole thing. For some reason I felt reassured by that. It's obviously in the genes.

Meanwhile Tricky is bounding through a range of wholesome strained foods. It is delightful seeing his little mouth open into a tiny o and then seeing a spoon piled high with mush disappear within. Perhaps a little too delightful, after a large quantity of vomiting this evening C and I worked out that we may be feeding him a little too much. The words 'goose', 'funnel', 'engorged liver' and 'fois gras' come to mind.

Back to the grindstone.

One Night In A Pleasant Beachside Suburb...

Here’s something interesting I’ve just learned about our sleep deprivation.

Even though Tricky may wake us at odd hours (last night he woke at 3am and then 4.30am), in between those waking times C and I are obviously sleeping like the …ahem…dead.

And the reason I know this, is because last night at 1.30am a silver hatchback parked outside our front gate, maybe 20 metres from our open window, was firebombed, but we slept through it.

The tree outside our house was set ablaze, there was a police car, fire engine and ambulance on the scene within minutes and neighbours standing all over the footpath, but we slept through it.

Thick black smoke and the smell of burning car swirled through the neighbourhood, bats filled the sky and the moon shone blood red (ok I'm making that last bit up) BUT WE SLEPT RIGHT THROUGH THE WHOLE THING until around 3 when Tricky woke up crying (no doubt traumatized by the sirens or nearly asphyxiated by the fumes) and immediately woke me up too. I sat up, fought my way out of our mosquito net, and hung over his cot mumbling shhh, mama's here, go to sleep as I patted his bum. I do remember that it seemed to take a while before he settled. I thought briefly about getting a drink of water, checked the clock, fought my way back into the mosquito net and instantly fell asleep again.

By some little quirk of luck we had parked our car in the back yard overnight and drove off happily to the markets (as we like to do on a Saturday morning) without even a hint that anything odd had happened in our pleasant neighbourhood.

So it wasn’t until we drove home and parked on the road and saw the burnt out shell of the car, the scorched tree, the glass and debris all over the road and the ash all over everything that we thought…what the? Our next door neighbour gave us the grizzly details, including the fact that the petrol canister sitting on the backseat was a dead giveaway that it was deliberate.

The whole place smelled of burning car he said as we turned to look at the open window which seemingly blocked out all trace of noise or mayhem from our slumbering bodies.

How could you have slept through that? We didn’t bother knocking on your door because we thought you must have gone away.

We’ve been sleep training, I said with a shrug.

Later C and I mused on how weird it was that I leap up at the slightest cough from Tricky but remain snoring despite the CSI scene on our doorstep.

Did you hear anything? I asked C. Because I do seem to remember some bangs. Like car doors. Yeah, I remember some bangs, said C. Vaguely.

God, it must be the whole sleep deprivation thing, I said. That, and the bottle of wine we drank last night.

Solid Gold (6 Months)

Dear Tricky

You are actually nearly a week over 6 months now but due to bushfires cutting off the freeway between Newcastle and Sydney we have been trapped for a few days at your grandparents’ house without my laptop (or a spare pare of undies). Hence my tardiness. (But also, you know this monthly letter thing is a deadline of sorts and we know how good I am with those.)



Let me start by saying that you are the Master of The Bounce. When we hold you vertically you like to bounce and bounce and bounce. It’s very Riverdance on crack cocaine, all we’re missing are the lace up shoes and the twirling Celtic drums. And that little smoking pipe thing. The other night when your friend Toby came to visit, he of the dampened toes, we held you both up, face to face and then you started your insane jumping and he just stared, fascinated but also deeply disturbed. Then you had a bath together (which meant two babies in the bath and five adults hovering over the bath), which started well but ended in tears when you started to bounce in a horizontal position and kicked water into poor Toby’s eyes. He still loves you but I’m sure he’ll plot his own revenge.


You are now taller but since you are often horizontal we call that ‘longer’. Your dada told the Baby Capsule hire service that you were 70cm in length but he based that on lying you beside Mr Caterpillar who has a 60cm ruler on his plush purple body and stuffed caterpillars are not known to be truly reliable measuring devices.

However, we do know that you are exactly 7.12 kg (with clothes). Well done you. And also well done me because that was basically all my breast milk that went into those 7.12 kilos. I look at your chubby thighs with great pride and think “I made those”.

Of course all that will change now and I will no longer be able to claim credit for building you up because you are officially onto solids. How exciting! But also scary because now you have to start trying new things. Like yoghurt which you loved and avocado which you hated with a strong and bitter hate so fulsome, so all consuming that I was forced to stick a finger into your mouth to remove all vestiges of the loathsome snot green fruit/vegetable. Not only that, when I put you to my breast to wash away the evil taste you could still sense the nanomicrobes clinging to your tastebuds which in turn must have attached to my nipple and tainted it with the Evil Avocado and then suddenly my breast milk which has always been such a big hit with you and your chubby thighs was deemed similarly loathsome and rejected with much wailing and Screaming Tomato impressions. I had to go into the bathroom and wash my breasts before you would deign to even look at them and I felt a strong maternal urge to hunt down and destroy every single avocado in the world.



You have started sleeping on your tummy. I last tried to swaddle you around Christmas when your previously marvelous sleep routine went to shit. It was all that rolling that did it because in the dead of night you would roll onto your stomach and then howl at the strangeness of it and also because you couldn’t roll back. The sleep-on-tummy thing was a little bit freaky for your father and I and for several nights we would leap up and flash our mobile phones at your cot to check that you were still breathing. Even having mastered the art of rolling you were still waking and crying and we felt like screaming ourselves because after having slept for some time from 7.30 to 5am with nary a peep we were now back to the bad old days and nights of 2 hourly feeds.

But at 6 months, so Ms Babylove tells us, you are old enough to be “sleep-trained”. And so you were. It was a horrible first night with me lying in bed beside you in your cot, listening to you shout obscenities for a few hours on end but then it was over. One night it took. Suddenly you remembered all the good things about sleeping for ten hours, and so did we.

We still have an early morning feed at 5.30 in the morning, and for those I’m grateful. I’m tired and woolly headed and you’re all sleepy and floppy and as we sit in that half light I hold you and nurse you and love you with all my might. I have been remembering my own mother, and in my muddle headed state I wondered if I was having flashbacks of feeding as a baby myself, the smell of the milk and her softness and the heaviness of the dark and the feel of her cotton nightie against my face. She was thinner then and her hair was long and I think I wound it in my hands just as you wind my hair in your hands.

Thankyou for that.



It was hard at times but I loved nursing you, I loved that it was me that solely nourished you with my milk. And although I and my breasts are looking forward to time off, it’s a little sad to let it go. One morning, while I slept in, your dad took you for a walk along the breakwater at Nobby’s lighthouse and then to breakfast at a café and when you got hungry he simply gave you the yoghurt off his bircher muesli. I was aghast when I finally rang to ask where you both were, primarily because I had bowling ball breasts that needed your attending to but also because your father told me you were happily asleep having eaten several teaspoons of yoghurt. It was the first time that you hadn’t needed me and it stung.

When I was infertile the most commonly used phrase was “just relax”. Now, it’s “enjoy this time”. Sometimes I think if I had a dollar for every time a kind well wisher smiled and whispered those three magic words I’d have enough money to hire a nanny so I could finish my deadlines and really enjoy this time. But mostly I hug you a little tighter because I realize it’s true. (Unlike the “just relax” comment which is complete bollocks).

You have been with us for six months. Six wonderful, miraculous, joyous months. Yesterday your father said he could not imagine a time without you. Neither can I. And I look forward to your growing and experiencing more of this incredible, beautiful, flawed and fragile world in the days to come.

Sans avocado, of course.


Your very own
OvaGirl
xxxxx

This little Piggy

Toby(two weeks late) is officially five weeks younger than Tricky(three weeks early). His parents are very good friends with C and I, and indeed Toby’s dad P and I go way back to the traveling theatre company years.

Oh how I smile as I think of the jolly times we had in the funny old yellow van with the uncomfortable back seat. The miles we drove. The tiny towns we visited. The small Australian mammals we inadvertently ran over.

And the children. The dear sweet innocent uptilted faces, with wonder in their eyes and phlegm in their throats. How we sang and danced and clowned for them. How we laughed at their funny questions and dodged their disgusting spit balls.

Just recently, I was proudly describing Tricky’s rolling skills (“he goes this way and that”) when Toby’s mother interrupted to casually mention that Toby was chewing his toes.

Don’t you mean ‘playing with them’? I enquired. Because Tricky does that all the time, when he’s not rolling…

No no, chewing, she said, with slightly more emphasis than necessary.

Later, talking to P, I heard more about the toe-chewing phenomenon. P affirmed that Toby was addicted to the taste of his own little piggies. He reaches down, pops them in his mouth and then goes to town. Loves them. Adores them. Chews them hour after hour.

Oh, I said. How… cute.

Toes. Chewing? It sounded a quirky little habit but I knew what it meant.

Toby is agile. Toby is able to find small pink wriggly things. Toby is frugal – toes cost nothing. Toby is selective – his toes, no one else’s. Toby enjoys convenience – toes are always to be had. Toby likes variety – fingers and toes, that made twenty different digital flavours. Unlike say, Tricky, Toby’s toes would always be clean and fresh and faintly moist, his sock fluff constantly hoovered away and helpfully swallowed.


Was Tricky chewing his toes yet?

No, I said. But have I mentioned the rolling?

Later, as I was feeding Tricky I couldn’t help staring at his feet. Before I knew it I was gently bending his ankles towards his face, not to shove them in his mouth, just to let him know they were there if he felt he wanted a little something after lunch.

He was faintly interested but not really. That’s fine, I told him. No pressure. We’ll concentrate on that rolling business. Have you considered cartwheels?

With P being a boy and myself being a girl(oddly enough) one might think we never had to compete for roles in the many plays we performed together. One would be wrong, particularly when one considers the great range of sexless characters that are up for grabs in the theatre for young audiences market. Also, one might think that writing and acting for school kids is a doddle of a job and those employed to do so would enjoy endless jolly laughs and hilarious theatrical japes. Again, so so wrong. But the great thing about being human is that we have the capacity to forgive. Also, the capacity to get drunk together and blame it all on the director.

P and I have stayed great friends all these years later and I’m hopeful that our sons will be great friends too. And along with telling Tricky to be kind to actors, I will also explain that competition between friends is fine. The truth is, a little competition never did P and I any harm at all.

Frankly, it kept us on our toes.

I Love the Night Life

All good things come to an end, even holidays with the family in Newcastle. I got to see my first movie since Tricky was born (unfortunately it was the loathsome Happy Feet), I got to picnic with old friends, I got to spend New Years Eve at a little house on Lake Macquarie and I got to eat out for the first time, sans bubba, at the posh harbourside restaurant my stepbrother P is a part owner in.

And so we’re back, back in the Big House, back at the laptop and back to the deadlines which seem to have created a permanent place for themselves somewhere between my brain cells and the corkboard on the wall in front of my desk.

I am in book mode which is exciting on one level and terrifying on most others, even though the editor gave me a little pep talk the other day.

C and I are currently doing a roster system, I have the baby in the morning and he takes him in the afternoon and hopefully we both get our work done. I have always aspired to being one of those organised regular writers. Sadly, judging by my performance throughout my entire conscious writing life, that’s never going to happen. I am always going to be the chick standing at the essay box scribbling in the bibliography at five minutes to five as the lecturer walks purposefully towards me down the corridor swinging the key. I like to think that, like olives, I perform best under pressure.

Tricky is getting bigger, at least we think he is, he seems to be heavier and he’s certainly outgrown a lot of his suits (including, sadly, a beautiful and extremely expensive one that C bought him a few months ago and I said had to be ‘put away for Christmas’). We won’t know for sure until we actually get him weighed and with our record that could be anytime up to his tenth birthday.

He has taken to rolling in a big way which is all very well until he rolls onto his tummy in the dead of night and wakes up, crying. Which brings me to last night and the night before which have been their own special little brands of hell. Having slept from 7.30 pm to 5am night after night he has now taken to waking two or three hourly and demanding food. And of course, since we share a room with him, those cries can be very persuasive. Yesterday I discussed “settling techniques” with my friend LL (her baby Toby was due a day after Tricky: Tricky came three weeks early and Toby came two weeks late so there’s now five weeks between them). We talked about the way some techniques seem to work and make you feel like a complete fucking genius and then suddenly nothing works and you have to start all over again.

Last night, the only thing that seemed to work was me dragging my boobs out and plugging him in.

I am officially tittywhipped.

Since he is almost six months (really? Six months? Good God.) we have tentatively started with solids which really means two small teaspoons of goop a day. For the first three days he had yoghurt which he seemed to love and then pumpkin which he seemed to hate and today banana which fell somewhere between the two.

Maybe it’s playing havoc with his system and keeping him up at night. Maybe solids is activating his testosterone levels and he’s practicing his bullying skills. Maybe I need to swaddle again, maybe he’s too hot, or too cold, or bitten by mosquitoes… Or maybe it’s just how it is this week and next week will be different and the week after that and the week after that…

If there is one thing I have learned, writing this blog, documenting this journey, it’s that things change, even when you think you’ve got a situation sussed. Whatever, all this lack of sleep is hard on the brain cells.

Sitting back in P’s restaurant, sipping wine and enjoying the whole sense of harbourside, red velvet, dry martini buzz of the place I suddenly spotted 80’s icon Lindy Chamberlain sitting at a table outside. Here was a mother once accused of killing her child in one of the most sensational cases of trial by media, many years later, enjoying a meal with friends.

My stepbrother P stopped by to see how the martinis were going down.
I saw Lindy Chamberlain, I told him surreptitiously.
Did you? he said. And what about Silverchair? They were sitting just over there.
I think it says something, that I could pick Lindy out of the crowd but totally failed to notice Newcastle’s most famous export.

Something about getting old, or priorities changing, or motherly mushbrain. I’d like to muse more on this but I’ve got deadlines you know and there’s only so many brain cells I can spare.