Cover Your Ovaries!

Georgie has entered one of those adorable, hilarious phases of toddlerhood. These times are brief,  glorious. She runs full pelt for cuddles. Calls 'bye' and 'pwees' and 'dates?' in her squeaky chipmunk voice. Blows kisses. Dances like Bez from the Happy Mondays. Stamps her foot and says 'No!' Laughs, musically, and wonderfully, all the time. Wants to be part of everything. 'I too! I too!'

I've been around the block enough times now to know that it is Only A Phase, and will quite soon be followed by a stage of whining or frustration or tantrums. At the same age,  Ivy took to banging her head on the floor in anger, and Ted insisted on being called Trixie-Jeff and shouted 'NO!' in answer to every question.

While they last, these seasons are just so sweet. I love this baby so much. It is enough to make ones ovaries quiver.

Fortunately (unfortunately?) our last venture down the pregnancy path ended with my limping towards the finish line like a marathon runner in lactic breakdown. Also, if I suggested another baby to Keith, he might...just...

In Which Normal Programming Is Briefly Suspended

The washing is piling up (shock! horror!) and the to-sort-out-later piles are threatening to take over the street this week because all my spare moments have been devoted to painting the kitchen. Projects like this make me inordinately happy. Sometimes it just overtakes me like a wave, this need to let the drudgery slide (god knows, the washing will be there tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow), and to spend a little time making something less fleeting and just as lovely as a good sandwich. Something that exists after the moment of making, the opposite to so much of my everyday work.

I have been painting and sanding away, gripped to an audio-book version of the thriller Gone Girl. Oh it's good. So so good. Keith has been tinkering away on his algorithms in the quiet  across the room while I (headphones on) reach into tricky corners and shout suddenly 'No! No you didn't!'We are both happy. Painting and tinkering away, surrounded by low-level squalor, beset by only mild illness, warm and safe.

Oh well. My painting project has to pause now. It's Wednesday and I've run out of spare minutes. The washing-up is calling, Keith is spiralling sicker, and I have  lunches to pack, bags to sort, clutter to redistribute, mischievous children to send back to bed...

Goodnight blog universe.

20/52 - A Portrait Project

An attempt to capture the spirit of my smallest baby Georgette, by documenting her in a photo every  week  for a year. See more at Jodie's 52 Project.  

Always with the stripping. 

We Cannot See Around Corners.

I am keeping a close eye on young Teapot today. He has a runny nose and a cough, and I'm listening out for the moment when his cough takes on the unmistakable tight ring of an asthma hack. He is snuggled under a heated blanket on the lounge watching Sesame Street with his big sister. I am thinking about setting up a big craft table this morning, but first, I must get through these tears.

I can't stop thinking about the two children tragically orphaned this week when their parents Kathleen and Rob Rickertson drowned. I have a kids cookbook, made by this family,  that I downloaded and printed out for my little chef Ted on his 4th birthday. It features Orlando and Otilija throughout, as they make and describing their favourite recipes. I loved these kids. Mine love to cook too. I imagined Ivy and Ted and George, years ahead, with their own specialities, taking over the kitchen.

These two kids were so cherished and so nourished by their parents, and their loss is unimaginable. There is a online trust set up for them here where we can donate, and they have, I am sure, a wonderful and loving extended family to care for them. But the particular, intense gaze of their parents, and the dreams of their family unit: these are gone.

Life takes turns, unexpectedly. We cannot see around corners. We are not all fated to live long and prosper. We are not.

Now is what we have. Useless tears for Orlando and Otilija, who have lost the watchful eyes of their parents on them as they grow, what  money we can spare for their future, and hugs, especially tight, for our own children today.

A Funny Thing Happened In The Pre-School Carpark

Last week at the pre-school pick up, I was chatting to my friend Emma in the carpark when a woman came up, strapped her baby in the car next to us and then suddenly shouted 'My wallet! Somebody stole my wallet!'

She ran past us, stopping to shriek 'Watch the baby! My wallet's gone!' as she headed at full speed back through the gates.

Emma and I looked at each other. 'That's so weird,' I said. 'No', said Emma, 'what's weird is that she's just put her baby in my car.'

Yep, their two cars were identical, down to the ubiquitous crumbly mess in the back seat.  This poor harried, underslept mother had strapped her kid into the wrong car and then had a massive hysterical freak out. In a few minutes she sheepishly returned, retrieved her baby, got into the right car and left.

I have not cackled and hooted and wept so hard in weeks. It was such a beautifully absurd moment and I recognised myself in that mother so very much, from the nutty mistake to the dramatic overreaction to the final, sheepish walk of shame. She is Everywoman.

I wish you all just such a full-bodied, deeply enjoyable belly laugh this weekend.