Parenting is hard...

… really HARD sometimes.

The hours are unlimited, there is rarely time off and weekends blur into just another day!

It can be boring and monotonous, messy, frustrating, isolating and bloody lonely.  There are times when it is terrifying, stressful and noisy.

After 48 hours of no sleep, sitting in your bombsite of a house, with unwashed hair and dishes and laundry threatening to take over the house who hasn’t dreamed of the time before kids? Virtually no responsibility, money, time to yourself - whether it is to read, shower, go to the loo alone…hell, even 30 seconds to moisturise for god’s sake…

Who, after hours of trying to get a screaming baby to sleep doesn’t consider violence when some asshole wakes your little darling?  After your significant other has swanned off to work in a nice, clean peaceful workplace, with time for coffee and maybe to read the paper, little chance of being shat or vomited on, leaving you in the wreckage of your life, with cracked nipples and unidentified matter under your nails and in your fringe and then has the balls to walk back in and ask what you have been doing all day…well, you get the picture!

You yearn for the time when your baby eats solids, talks, walks…right up until they do.  Then you look back fondly to the days when they stayed where you put them, and didn’t answer every question with NO!

All of that said… Parenting is also the best thing in the world, so much more than just a job, the rewards can be so much greater.

The first smile, first words and steps, a squishy cuddle, all the milestones.  The time when your little boy stops rioting around the house, takes your face between his chubby little hands and says “I love you Mummy, you’re so beautiful” and lands a big sloppy kiss. 

The privilege of watching the little person you have created going out into the world, starting school, making friends, starting their first job. Of creating a useful member of society, a kind and caring individual who also knows his own mind and takes no shit from anyone, who stands up for what’s right and protects the weak. Nothing could make you prouder.

Not everyone gets the child they long for, I grieve for them.  Not everyone choses to have children, I respect that.

But, for ME, parenting has been the single most important achievement in my life...

So yes, parenting is hard, but so worth it!!!

Postpartum (or After-after birth…)

Mrs Woog certainly started something here didn't she?  There is an equally brilliant follow up post on her blog with gorgeous pictures of lots of ladies post-birth.

Jane, from mum-i-am also did a great post in response.  Check it out here.

I think that the idea resonated with so many of us as we are all sick of the picture perfect model style photos people chose to show after their babies are born, hair and make-up done, lumpy bits disguised. 

Far more beautiful are the pictures of a tired, sweaty mum with bloodshot eyes and a bird’s nest hairstyle!  Eyes glazed with a mix of triumph, exhaustion, sheer terror and quite often a liberal sprinkling of drugs!

A common theme in comments and posts is how gorgeous and lovely people’s Obstetricians were.  Mine alas was not.  A very serious and quite frankly unfriendly man with hands like bunches of bananas – have you notices that Ob/Gyn’s often have the largest hands, what is with that?  

Eye-watering....

After birth...

Inspired by the ever funny Mrs Woog I have decided to share some of the glamorous photos taken before and after the birth of my son. 

Pop on over to see what she had to say, it’s OK, I’ll wait…

  

There was no money for beauticians so I went with the natural look. I was very lucky in pregnancy; it was the best my skin, hair and nails have ever been!

 Anyway, at this point I was beyond caring, two weeks overdue with a big baby in the heat of late summer my look was the last thing on my mind!

There are no delivery room shots, things were too serious for that, there aren’t even any shots for a couple of days after, I was too sick for that!

Between admission and induction, I was feeling pretty good about things at this stage… 

Sexxxy...

Several days later, the drip is out so it is after day 4…I swelled up like a balloon!

Oh dear....

My precious, made it all worthwhile...

All together now...awwww

 How about you?  Care to share???

In the unlikely event that you do not already follow Mrs Woog go and check her out...

Planked

According to Wikepedia,  “Planking is the action of lying face down with arms to the sides of the body, in unusual public spaces and photographing it.
Planking began as early as 1997 in South Korea, Europe and Japan. The term "planking" was coined in Australia and became a fad in 2011....”

...hmmm -14 years after it started.  Says either we as a nation were too smart to embrace the fad, or more likely are just that far behind the times!

Tragically this month in Brisbane, a 20-year-old male fell to his death after "planking" on a seventh-floor balcony. This is the first known casualty of the planking movement.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard told plankers that their "focus has to be on keeping yourself safe first". The Queensland Opposition and the State's police have called for people to stop participating in the fad.

Yesterday’s news showed eternal fuckwit Sam Newman planking on the railing of a 40th storey balcony, Kerri-Ann Kennerley had a go on her show, even Karl Stefanovic joined in...now I don’t know about you, but I am not inclined to rush out and copy anything they are doing!

But I guess I am not the target audience of this behavior... drunken 20 something’s seem to be obsessed.  The media is currently fuelling the fire of this fad with pictures and stories in every bulletin, Facebook pages and societies have sprung up around the place.

While this kind of thing is not my cup of tea, I will admit, the first time you see it, it is faintly amusing:

See original pic here.

Attempting a rare bit of parenting I raised the subject with my 17 year old son, who said “Mum, you are just buying into all the political and media hype about this.  It is typical, one idiot kills himself, a few people are arrested and the whole thing is deemed dangerous...it has been going on for years.” I asked that if he does participate he be safe, his response...    “Mum, I’m 17, you are out of touch and just embarrassing yourself...”

Little bastard....

Planning ahead...

When my boy  was 13 he elected to sign up for cookery classes at school, he explained that if he could cook really well he “would get a better girlfriend in the future...”

If only it were that easy!

I have a confession....

I have never owned a Barbie doll.

Now as a girl child in the ‘70’s I must have been one of only a few in the world. Everyone I knew had a Barbie doll...I used to go to my friend’s houses and marvel over the range of accessories and dresses and bits and pieces of plastic crap their clearly more stylish parents bought for them.

Barbie seems to be a bit of a slapper...or is that just me?

I had a Cindy doll...pfft. I pretended she was Barbie...

The only daughter I was blessed with came into my life when she was already 10 years old, so way past the Barbie stage. My eldest boy was 4 and obsessed with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, so no joy there.

My younger son was always a real boy. He gravitated towards mud, rough and tumble and trucks from a very early age. Because I wanted to be the best Mum I could be and raise a well rounded child, one not weighed down with the sexist limitations placed upon children by society (or something), I bought him a Barbie doll when he was about 2. He took one look and then left her in the toy box for a week.

The next time I saw her, her clothes had been removed, her head pulled off and her remains were chucked in the back of a Tonka truck...

It gives you pause when you idly wonder if your son is going become a psycho... When people ask if there were signs of “off” behaviour when he was small...

But then he started to take apart EVERYTHING, toys, trucks, appliances, so I figured he was just a destructive little bugger and not a budding serial killer!

When he was about 4ish, Aqua released the song “Barbie Girl”. Go on, have a listen, you know you want to...





All the kids at daycare, he was friends with mostly little girls it seemed, were obsessed, and their carers let them listen to this song endlessly...

One day my son said “Mummy, I really hate that song...it is driving me crazy!” I suggested that he ask for a different song to be played occasionally but he said ”But Mummy, my girlfriend just loves it, and I want her to be happy...”

Awww...

Baby talk

You have a baby, if they are anything like mine by 18 months they could talk the back off a bus, by 2 years they  talk in full sentences and swear fluently and in context but only in public and invariably around old, shockable types*blush*.

Oops...

You know how it is, those first few months you can’t wait for them to talk and then they start, and they just don’t stop to draw breath, always with questions and stories and questions, and them some more questions...until around their 13^th birthday, and then they choose to communicate in a series of grunts and shrugs for years.

I spent the first year of my son’s life at home with him, talking to him, reading to him, singing to him which they tell me is why he talked early.  I put in all the hard yards and the little bugger’s first word...you guessed it, “Dada”. 

If you are anything like us a few of their gems become family “tradition”, long after the kid stops using them.  

Here are a few of our favourites (with translations for those not fluent in toddler):

Yakamoo – Vacuum, he was terrified of it, come to think of it, now he is 17 he still is!

Bewibwetly – As in, “I didn’t do it Bewibwetly Mummy”

P-catz – Pussy cats, he wanted one so badly, didn’t get one until he was 10, the name stuck.

Wists – Wrists, as in “Daddy’s got sore wists” in hushed tones accompanied by a sympathetic head tilt.  (Our arthritis story is for another time.)

Cuffatea – Dad drinks coffee, Mum drinks tea, put it together you have a cuffatea.

Have love – When his much older sister had a boyfriend over and they were in her room (door open of course!), and my little sweetie marched  in and asked if they were going to “have love”, I tell you I have never seen a guy move so fast to get out of there! Hehehe

Annnd the big finale...drum roll please.  Sausage, which involved some nappy free time, squatting to play on the floor and the comment “look Mummy...sausage!” Both hilarious and ewwww at the same time. ...as a Mum of a boy you have to roll with the punches and laugh at poo too!

What little gems have your kids added to the family vocabulary?