Back by popular demand

Hi there everyone... by which I mean, no-one, of course, since I haven't posted for so long I have no readers left whatsoever!

I've been thinking about making a Strawberry's World comeback though, instead of clogging up Facebook with my rantings and some people (bless their cotton socks) seem to agree.

It's been almost a year since I last posted, and that one post was my only post since my little boy - let's call him The Terror - was born almost four years ago.

Little Red is not so little any more, having recently turned 8 and started Grade 3, with an obsession with pop singers, makeup and Minecraft gradually overtaking My Little Ponies.

My 3 year absence and that one post from last year are pretty telling, I guess. The transformation of our little family from 3 to 4 has been challenging, to say the least.   Our Little Terror, god love him, is a very difficult child who we are now getting assessed for being ASD (or ADHD, or ODD... who knows).  He's the kind of kid who has been late to toilet train, early to get into everything he shouldn't be.  If he's not climbing on high cabinets he's covering himself in Sudocreme (or worse), he's throwing tantrums in supermarkets and ripping up books.  It's an all-consuming task managing him every day and the stress is affecting me and our household significantly.

I think in my last post I was feeling guilty about my self-preservation instinct and about Scarlett not getting what she needed from me.  I still feel guilty about the latter but not the former.  Being able to drink a coffee, work out at the gym or find 5 minutes to read a magazine is the only thing keeping me from total insanity.   Hopefully the latter will improve as we get a diagnosis for the Terror (whom I love, I truly do). 

Then, we can address the marriage part of the equation.  But that's for another post :)

Clinging onto myself

There are many in the mummy world who feel like they do too much.  No time to themselves, always thinking of others... is it weird, or even a little abhorrent maybe that I think that I do the opposite?

I scramble to retain myself too much, I put myself first (to a certain degree).  As long as the kids are comfortable, fed etc. (so I suppose I do put them first with basic needs) I need and fight for MY SPACE, my time. Sometimes I even push them away, or in particular Scarlett, to get that... No, I don't want to play.  I want to read this magazine. No I will not do your nails, I'm finishing my coffee that I JUST made. I'm off to the gym.  No... I love you, but just no....

Here's the truth:  I don't like to play with my kids. I like to TALK to them.  I like to cuddle them.   I will colour (begrudingly); I will read books. I don't mind a board game occasionally.  I just despise 'playing', particularly imaginative games like "schools" involving My Little Ponies.   Who are these parents who "play" and seem to enjoy it?  I missed that gene.

In fact I primarily gave birth to child number 2 specifically so number 1 would have someone other than me to play with.  So far, that's not working out so well. (why didn't anyone tell me?!)

Does the fact that I don't like to play make me a bad mum? 

I can pinpoint many other times I'm not selfish.  If I'm watching a movie or eating I won't complain about pausing 190 times or letting my food go cold to get them drinks, change bums, wipe faces.  I will always make sure they have what they need before I get what I need.   But I jealously guard my 'me time'.  I don't remember my mum ever looking after herself.  Then when she snapped, she snapped in a big way... whatever it was that had happened just opened the floodgates I guess.

I have avoided giving too much of myself in relationships so as not to feel depleted.  Sometimes my children deplete me.

In the storm of their relentless neediness, I cling to these little pieces of freedom.  

Alien baby!!

Conversation with Little Red last night...

"Is the baby coming tomorrow?"

"No darling the baby has to get MUCH bigger before it comes out."

"But maybe we could make it smaller because then it would be much easier for me to carry."

"No sweetheart - if babies are born too small they will be sick."

(Considers)  "Okay mummy.  Mummy?"

"Yes?"

"When the baby is ready to come out, it will BURST open your belly!"

"Ah... no...."

The funniest thing about this last exchange, is that it was said with such gory delight and glee - no concern at all for mummy and the carnage of her poor belly!   Has my child been watching Alien??    Or Breaking Dawn?  LOL.

The Booze Grinch

The worst thing about not drinking when pregnant isn't missing the alcohol itself, much to my surprise. (while my infatuation with chardonnay pre-baby knew no bounds, I've found absence actually makes the heart grow a little more distant.... and after 12 weeks I now regard the whole thing with a kind of detached nostalgia.  Somewhat like looking back on those joints you smoked in uni - good times, as you kind of recall, but not something you're compelled to do again immediately).

No, the worst thing about not drinking, is being around people who are.  Copiously.
And this time of the year, that's quiiiiite a frequent occurance.


I was the "designated driver" (another joyous perk of pregnancy) for my hubby and two other friends to a Foo Fighter's concert last weekend.


Things started out well:  we were all boyant.  Me naturally pumped up, and they with the aid of an esky full of "travellers", consumed on our 1-hour journey into the city.  We sang along to Fooey's songs in the car and I laughed along to all the high-spirited jokes and jibes.


Cue the concert.  Drinking by my companions continued with gusto, despite the highway robbery of $7 thimbles of beer at the venue.   Several hours in, and this started to get to me... just a little.   "Another one?"  I said as hubby procured another $10 note from my purse.  "Can't you wait until we get home?"
(this line of logic, of course, never applied when I was the one wasting $9 of a flute of champagne)


Later, it's 10.30pm and waaaaay past my bedtime.  It's starting to show.  The music's just becoming a bit repeditive now, our seats are crap and everything's beginning to bug me.  This is the time that really seperates The Drinkers from The Non Drinkers.   I could really have done with a nap right about then; on the other hand, my companions were up for an adventure.


"Let's go sneak in somewhere else," my hubby urged, and tiredly I complied, dragging my 3-months pregnant desperate-for-a-nap self down to the lower levels with them.  Miraculously, we did find better viewing and actually spent quite a nice 45 minutes cuddled up with hubby on some stairs.  That is, apart from when he's singing in my ear - LOUDLY.   Oh, and grabbing my boobs and butt.


"Wow," he keeps saying, sloshing his beer; "The crowd here is AMAZING!  Isn't this the BEST!   Everyone's just so amazing!"


Not to dull your enthusisam, babe - but um, I don't really see it.


People jostle me.


A bloke takes off his shirt next to me, and gyrates his hips like it's a night club.


On an upper level two pissed chicks throw water from their water bottle down onto our heads.


My tolerance needle is inching towards the red.


Concert over, it's time for the drive home.  Now I'm really, REALLY tired.  Like, supersonically tired, in a way that makes me wonder if I'm actually safe to make it home.  But make it I do, no thanks to the fools in the back (and front) seat, yahooing the entire way home, poking my seat and repeating themselves over and over.  The main two questions are: "Did you have a good time?" and "Are you okay?" - neither of which I'm quite sure how to answer at this stage.


We deposit our friends at home and now, hubby wants to go to another party.  It's 12.30pm and I think my brain might actually be seeping from my eyeballs, but I drop him off there.  I'll spare you the conversation that went on enroute, and suffice to say, the tolerance needle passed the red, began making a loud ticking noise and started emitting smoke.   I didn't attend the party, obviously :)


Ah, grinch much?  But really, there's a certain point and then The Wall hits, and I definitely reached it that night.  Why is it you don't realise how obnoxious people are when they're drinking until you're not?  Was I really that annoying?


Probably.


Ah well... bring on the next event!

Merry Christmas darling... here's a toilet!

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?

The Pink Balloon

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?

Week 8, feeling great!

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!