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.

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.