The Tradie and I are practical people, both of us. Over the years our Christmas, Valentine's and birthday gift-giving has waned from effusive to perfunctuory to just plain non-existent sometimes (in the case of V Day).
It just seems silly to spend on each other when there's so many bills to pay, and we're sort of useless gift-givers anyway.
It's become even worse since we bought our first home a year ago; there's just SO much that needs to be done and so little cash to do it with, I don't believe we've exchanged so much as a plucked garden rose and a card between us the last 12 months.
But this year's Christmas will take the cake. Instead of presents for each other this year we decided we'd buy something "for the house" instead. Makes sense. But what does "the house" need right now?
A new toilet.
That's right, we're buying a dunny for Christmas. Seasons greetings honey!
Tehehehe.
Tell me you find this as funny as I do.
Do you and your partner buy Christmas gifts for each other?
Amongst the endless hours of frustration, boredom and not-in-a-good-way challenges are those motherhood moments.
The times it hits you what it's all about. The moments, when the love and pride you feel puffs out from your chest like a vast pink balloon... one which is surely visible for all the world to see.
Oh the wonder of them...the wonder of having created them!
Some of my Pink Balloon moments...
1. The little standoffs... she, arms crossed, determined. Telling me that black is white and night is day, and that is that, Mummy. Because - naturally, at three and a half years old - she's blessed with an infinite knowlege of the world to which mere adults are not privvy.
Like David to Goliath, she will stand up for her assertions (even in the face of irrefutable proof otherwise). That immutable sense of self.... I hope you never lose that my darling. You are fierce, my tigress. I admire you.
2. Believing in magic. That broccoli will make your arms grow long enough to reach the monkey bars (she believes this so feverently, she's even been known to snack on raw broccoli at night before bed - now that's commitment!), that if you brush your teeth every night you will have teeth like a Disney Princess, that Santa really is talking to her from the North Pole, not just me with my poor ventriloquist skills booming "ho ho ho"!
This magic wand, powered by the fairy dust of generations of believing, is right there at my fingertips. I promise to use it wisely.
3. Boundless enthusiasm and delight in the ordinary. A piece of toast, cut into a different shape to yesterday ("Wow!") A new episode of a favourite show ("This is my best show, ever ever!"). An ant. A old, broken toy. Plastic bubble wrap. Tickles. I want to learn from your joy in free things, too.
4. Sitting watching TV and stroking smooth little arms and legs, unconsciously, as you sit in my lap. Soaking you in through the pores of my skin. I am as helpless to stop touching you as our planets are to resist the gravitational pull of the earth. I wonder if my own mother misses this.
5. Hero idolation for doing the smallest thing, like setting up your paddling pool ("That's SO super dooper! Mummy you are my BEST friend."). I wonder if you know that those words - that I am your best friend - fill my heart with lightning-bolts of joy.
6. When it's always, and only, me who can soothe and comfort after a fall and apply a Dora bandaid "just so".
7. When I sneak in to fix the doona and gaze at the chubby face that, hours earlier was berating me singing the "wrong" words (read: different to her interpretation) to an advertising jingle, now transformed in repose. Sleep melts years away and I see my newborn, my 6 month old, my wobbly beginner-walker in those flushed cheeks.
I see the face of what's becoming too. And the beauty of it just breaks my heart.
What are your pink balloon moments?
This is apparently what my baby looks like right now. Awww, look at the little flippers... how cute!!! My adorable little sea-creature is being a good boy/girl too, thankfully sparing me the nausea this time around.
I'm a bundle of other first trimester woes: constipated, flatulent (sorry Tradie), bitchy, pimply as a teenager - but no nausea really.
Well that's not entirely true... still feel a little seasick from time to time, but nothing that's put me off my toast yet.
Blimely I'd forgotten how nice carbs are!
Cereal... OMG. I think I want to marry you. Muesli with fresh blueberries and yogurt and skim milk.... *drool* This is my nirvana at the moment.
It's strange but after over a year of low-carb dieting I'd much rather tuck into a wholegrain muffin with honey, than a chocolate bar anyday. I am in heaven just eating a pasta salad for lunch.
Different from last pregnancy, where if food didn't come from the Golden Arches, or have a list of preservatives as long as my arm, I didn't want to touch it.
I wonder if that's why Little Red is such a junk food-a-holic?
Have put on 2.2kg so far. But that's kind of expected, going from not eating pasta, rice, bread etc. to suddenly eating it again. This week my weight stayed the same though, so hopefully that's going to be the most of my first trimester gain.
Bloated, a little chubbier but not showing my secret just yet :)
Booked in for my first visit with the midwives at the hospital on 29 November. Little prawn I can't wait to hear your heartbeat!!
I have to go to Monash Medical Centre, for "high risk" pregnancies. At some point I'll share with you all why that is, but I don't like to dwell on my last labour too much, lest I revert into a shivering, rocking-back-and-forth mess of jelly in the corner.
Oh, the horror. But needless to say, am doing it all over again - too late to back out now! and that's that.
Better go, it's time for the half-hourly feeding of my face. Love to you all!
I think I'm a bit of a beauty tight-arse.
It strikes me as incredibly indulgent to pay someone $150 to lop off your hair. I'll go to Price Attack and still feel peeved at handing over $40. Usually I get my lovely hairdresser sister in law to cut my hair, but, truthfully, I've also been known to have a bit of a go of it myself with a pair of scissors. Sometimes it doesn't look bad either.
(but mostly it's crap. Don't try this at home.)
I won't pay for waxing - I've been doing my own for years. And what about PLUCKING? Who pays someone to PLUCK their eyebrows, for goodness sake?
Next people will be paying for someone to shave their armpits. Imagine: "That'll be $7 extra for shaving cream". Don't laugh, I bet a salon out there is having a lightbulb moment as we speak.
Nails; I haven't had mine done since my wedding, and that was a disaster. I spent the entire honeymoon peeling off my doomed acrylics.
There was one time I bought a Clinique moisturiser, but mostly I go for Ponds or Olay or whatever is under $10 at the supermarket. I will pay for makeup; but by god I'm not happy about it one bit.
What are you a bit of a tight arse about?
