Episode 10 - Oodles of poodles

I have a theory about parenting:  it’s 50% entertainment and 50% excrement.

Under the excremental banner flies the big four: poo, wee, vomit, blood.  Snot and spit occasionally sneak in there, but if you can deal with the former, the latter will be a breeze.

But even as a parent of two exceptionally gifted excreters, I can still get taken by surprise occasionally.  Tuesday morning for example.

There we all are, the perfect little family, mum and dad making breakfast, the 3 year old eating Weet-bix, the baby playing happily on the floor.  Suddenly, an intense odour swamped the kitchen. 

“Poo!” yells Smudge, looking up from his Weet-bix.

“Yours!” cries my loving husband.  I sigh and head over to pick up the baby.  But instead of the poo being inside the nappy, waiting darkly to be changed, the poo has somehow defied gravity and is ALL OVER the floor.  The baby is sitting in the middle of a gigantic, sloppy puddle of brown, running his fingers merrily through it, drawing on the tiles and the window.  And as I watched in shock, he lifted his chubby, poo covered hand, looked at it curiously, then stuffed it in his mouth.

I don’t need to go into further details.  You don’t need to hear about the screaming, yelling, showering, mopping, outfit changing, Glen-20ing and gagging that ensued. 

But as gross as poo eating is, this is what I found really offensive out of the whole incident: not twenty minutes prior to this, the baby was sitting in his high chair, flat out refusing to eat breaky.  And it was a good breaky too!  Cereal with fruity bits, a banana, toast spread with children’s low-sodium Vegemite and lovingly cut into little fingers.  He wouldn’t have a bar of it.

But a handful of his own faeces… yum.  What the?!  The fact that he will snub my nutritional and balanced meal and decide to eat poo is what amazes and annoys me. 

That’s why I love parenting: it’s weird in ways you can’t even imagine before you begin.  You’ll laugh harder that you ever did before and cry more too.  Sometimes you’ll do both at the same time.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a nappy bin that needs changing…

Episode 9 - "Tense" conversations

My son is learning about tense.  He’s a very bright three year old, and he understands the concept of past, present and future.  Unfortunately, at the moment, everything past is “last night”, whether it happened two months or two minutes ago.  It doesn’t sound like a big deal, does it?  And yet, I find that it keeps leading me into strange conversational corridors…

The concrete slab on our house is leaking, so we’ve had workmen turning up and needing to be let in for the last few days.  They troop in and out, carrying equipment and ladders and buckets, much to my son’s unending delight.  “Men mummy!  Men are here!  Hello man!  What choo doin’?”  Smudge tends to get a little too curious in how things like power drills and concrete glue work, so most of the time, I send him off to his room to keep him out of the road.

That day, my husband had gone straight from work to a mates place to watch the footy, getting in after we had all gone to bed.  So when Smudge finally caught up with him the next morning, the first words out of his mouth were, “Daddy, men came over last night and mummy let them in!  Men came to my house last night and mummy sent me to my room.”

Luckily, my husband does trust my fidelity, so he didn’t immediately jump to the conclusion that I had been hosting a threesome whilst he was out for the evening, but my son’s statement still took a bit of explaining, and me giggling through the whole thing probably didn’t help my case.

Then there was the lengthy explanation required by Smudge’s kindy teacher.  She approached me the other afternoon and gently began touting the dangers of night swimming.  Confused I replied, “I know night swimming is dangerous…  What’s this about?”

Of course, Smudge had been informing her all day that I took him to the beach “last night” and he went swimming.  Kindy immediately jumped to the conclusion that I was letting my three year old paddle in the night sea, when the reality was Smudge went to the rock pools on a Sunday morning and got wet up to his knees.

His other delightful statement for the week was to poke me in the belly and say, “Mummy, your tummy is soft and HUGE!”  What an ego boost.

We spend the first few years with our kids teaching them a language, encouraging them to learn words and form sentences.  Then we spend the next few years wishing we could make them pipe down and not repeat embarrassing phrases.  But having watched one of my close friends deal with her autistic and language delayed children, I know there is nothing sweeter that helping my boys learn to find their way vocally in this world.  Even if that means I have some explaining to do along the way.

Episode 8 - The "busy" debate

I was discussing the oh-so delicate subject of housework with my closest mummy friend Mich the other day.  She told me her neighbour (who doesn’t have a job and has two kindy days a week for her kids) was upset because her husband has been hassling her about not doing enough housework.  He wants to know, when the kids are gone two days a week and she’s not working, why the dishes still don’t get done and the washing basket is still full.

Now, in days gone by, I would have immediately pulled on my riding boots and mounted my high horse:  “How DARE he?  Why doesn’t he do a load of washing?  Men, what do they know…” etc.  And Mich would have saddled up right behind me, “It’s not all the woman’s responsibility!  She has two kids!  Why doesn’t he understand!” and so on.

But now, I have two kids and a full time job.  Mich has two kids and a part-time job AND she’s studying to be a teacher.  And the question we both wanted to ask but didn’t was, “Well… why isn’t the housework getting done?”

But we’d NEVER voice the question out loud.  Here’s why:

‘Busy’ is like pain: it’s different for every person.  As a single woman, I used to think I was busy.  I worked, I had my parents, I had a social life, there was the gym and parties and boys.  Then I got married and had a child and realised up till that point, I had no idea what busy was.  Then I had a second child, and when friends with one baby would say, “I just don’t have any time!” I would roll my eyes and think, You don’t know how easy you’ve got it…  Then I went back to work full-time, and I often wonder what in the world was I doing before with the eight hours a day I didn’t have to spend on my job.  And working mums with three or more kids probably look down on me and think, “Slack.”  Don’t even get me started on Octo-mum…

And that’s the thing – everybody believes they are busy.  You say to an unemployed homeless man, “Gee, you look like a busy person,” and he’ll launch into, “Yes!!!  I spend all day hunting through bins for tinfoil, then I have to set up my box, and the Salvo’s are on the other side of town, so I lose an hour getting to and from the soup kitchen…”

So this neighbour lady probably does think she’s busy.  What’s she doing with the two days a week she’s spending alone?  Who knows, but I bet if you asked her, she could list off a myriad of tasks which fill in her time.

So I shall stable my high horse: just like I wouldn’t judge someone else’s pain, I won’t judge anyone else’s idea of busy. 

Having said that, unless you’re Nadya Suleman, please don’t expect me to commiserate with you over the fact you can’t find time to get your nails done when I haven’t showered in three days. 

Episode 7 - Yoga with my 3 year old

Yes, I should know better.  But between the small people, the husband, my work and running a household, almost all the hours my day are spoken for and finding a few minutes to exercise can be tricky.

So with the baby asleep and Smudge happily watching Bob the Builder on DVD on our laptop, I cued up a yoga session on the TV.  Here is the breakdown of the next 30 minutes:

An impossibly perfect and limber creature on screen began intoning instructions at me and I figured the first exercise wasn’t too hard.  All I had to do was simply breathe and lift my arms over my head and back down. 

After a minute of heavy inhalations, Smudge looked up curiously from his DVD and decided to join in.  Standing next to me, he waved his arms, huffing and puffing.  “Isn’t my son adorable!?”  I thought to myself.  About 20 seconds later, it all went downhill.

It was my own fault really:  As I leaned into triangle pose, I clearly represented a challenge to my son that had to be accepted.  Smudge decided to climb Mt. Mummy by grabbing my track pants and sticking his foot into the back of my knee.  Unfortunately my pants slipped and made it all the way to my calves before I could straighten up and scoot him away.  As I yanked up my trackies and hoped no one was looking through the window, the yoga teacher on the screen had already moved on.

In downward dog, Smudge crawled beneath me, rolled over, looked up and giggled.  “Hello mummy!” he shrieked delightedly.  The next pose required me to put my foot exactly where his cute little face was planted, so I shuffled over a few feet.  He followed.  

“Hello mummy!”  

I moved back. 

“Hello mummy!”  

I gave up.

Five minutes later, I was kneeling in child’s pose, with my head on the ground and the teacher saying things like, “Really relax into this position, just breathe.”  All of a sudden, my son launches himself off the couch onto my back.  “Horsey!  Nay, mummy, nay!”  All of the wind knocked out of me, I pushed up to try and remove him, but he simply locked his surprisingly strong legs around my waist and giggled.  “Come on mummy!  Nay!”

Finally, the end of the session came.  I lay on my back, attempting to complete the obligatory relaxation period while keeping one eye cracked open for any other sneak attacks.

I was surprised.  Smudge crawled up to me, laid his little head on my shoulder and gave me a kiss.

It was the perfect work out.

Episode 6 - Sleep? What is this sleep?

I was speaking with a friend of a friend the other day. She calmly related to me that her five and a half month old baby girl hasn’t slept more than two hours in a row since she was born.

Let’s take a moment to reflect on this statement. If baby hasn’t slept more than two hours, her breast-feeding mummy wouldn’t have had more that that either. That’s almost six months of near-complete sleep deprivation.

The record for the longest period without sleep is 18 days, 21 hours, 40 minutes during a rocking chair marathon. The record holder reported hallucinations, paranoia, blurred vision, slurred speech and memory and concentration lapses.

This woman has admittedly had small periods of sleep over the last six months, but compared to a normal, functioning human, she’s well below the norm. So how do you say politely, “Umm, so have you been experiencing many hallucinations lately?” Instead I just asked her, “How do you do it?”

“Oh,” she replied serenely, “I just do.”

A new baby typically results in 400-750 hours lost sleep for parents in the first year. That is such a scary figure, I can barely wrap my head around it. And apparently, seventeen hours of sustained wakefulness leads to a decrease in performance equivalent to a blood alcohol-level of 0.05%. So forget about having that glass of wine in the evening mummy: according to stats, you’re already drunk.

Sleep is something you can only truly appreciate once you’ve lost it for a stretch. I know I’ve had my sleepless nights, but luckily my boys are both excellent sleepers otherwise I don't know if I could survive, let alone work full time. My next door neighbour’s child is almost three and still hasn’t slept through the night. How her poor mother hasn’t boxed her up and mailed her off to Finland yet, I’ll never know.

So what makes the difference with kids? How come some mothers are barely functioning, slurring their way through the day with tomato eyes, while other mummies merrily slip boasts into their conversations like, “Oh my kids have all been sleeping through the night since they were five days old.”
I honestly can’t tell you. Part of it seems to be lucky dip: some kids simply sleep better than others. I know parents who swear by routines lifted from baby sleep books. And my own mother used to dose us with Phenergan occasionally. (Don’t worry, it didn’t eefect mi et al.)

Whatever the answer, the next time you speak with a mother of a child under twelve months, forgive her if she squints and forgets your name (or her own) and bear in mind that she is quite possibly seeing you as a giant talking sheep and wondering what your wool tastes like.

Episode 5 - The deadly Calais

As a working mummy, I appreciate the fact my job allows for some flexibility during work hours, which means I can duck away from my computer for a while and make the time up later.  This is especially helpful on days like today, which started with a phone call from my parents asking for help moving stuff into their shed.

It seems like a reasonable request doesn’t it?   But when I arrived, I discovered my mum failed to mention "stuff" was my dad's ancient, rusty Calais.  It was finally being laid to rest in the shed at the back of their property, which is up a decent incline.  Now, the Calais isn’t running, so my dad had decided to pull it into the shed using his ride-on mower.  So I thought I would be carrying around a few boxes, and instead found myself sitting in the burning hot sunshine, wearing my cute work pants and heels, at the wheel of the trusty ride-on.

We started with my dad pushing from behind the car with me on the mower in front, revving the engine hard as I dared.  But the Calais refused to climb the hill.  My dad quickly decided that I wasn’t “man enough” for mower duties, so I was demoted down to car pushing while he drove.

So with my dad at the wheel, we actually managed to get the car up the hill, but just as the front wheels rolled into the shed, the rope attached to the mower broke.  Of course, I didn’t see it happen, I only became aware something was wrong as the Calais began to roll back towards me.

Quick as a bunny, I moved out of the way.  Then I realised the Calais was rolling directly towards where I had parked.  I had driven there in my husband’s car and the ute was right in the path of the on-coming Calais.

Now, to put it lightly, husband and daddy do NOT get along.  My brain flashed me a very clear image of the unpleasant conversation ahead of me if the two cars collided.  “Hi honey!  Oh that massive panel damage?  Just my dad’s rusty Calais making vigorous love to your work vehicle…”  I was not prepared for that outcome, and so I threw myself back behind the Calais.

In hindsight, I could have easily become a candidate for a Darwin Award.  My pretty work sandals proved highly ineffectual in the loose gravel as I strained to slow the runaway car down.  I slipped and landed flat on my side with my head coming dangerously close to the tyres.  Skinned from ankle to thigh, I scrambled up and realised I was about to lose the battle.  I closed my eyes and resigned myself to death by crushing, still a better alternative than informing my husband about damage to his car.

With only seconds to spare, my dad made it to the Calais and yanked on the handbrake.  Slightly shaky, I excused myself to head inside for Band-Aids to treat the blood running freely down my leg.  My mum sat in the kitchen, engrossed in a work phone call and oblivious to my near-death experience.  Mixing water and Dettol in the sink, I looked up in time to see my dad had decided to press on without me:  he had reattached the rope and was revving the mower as hard as it could go.  As I watched in horror, the front wheels of the mower lifted off the ground and the mower began to flip over on top of my dad.

“FUDGE!!!” I yelled (or something similar) at the top of my lungs, forgetting my mum was two feet away on the phone to her boss.  I dropped the bloody cotton balls and dashed for the door, panicked that our backyard was about to become a scene from Lassie.  “What’s that girl?  Pa’s trapped under the tractor!” 

But just as my dad was about to become the squishy meat in a mower/ gravel sandwich, he managed to somehow swing a leg backwards and hold the mower over his head.  I reached him just as he wrested the mower back on all four wheels.

“Are you okay?” I asked breathlessly.

“Yeah, of course,” he calmly replied.  “I meant to do that.”

Yup.  Sure you did.

Half an hour and two more broken ropes later, we finally had the Calais moved into its final resting place.  No harm done, except my mum having to convince her boss clients don’t normally experience loud profanities while on the phone with her, and I’ll be wearing long pants to meetings for a few weeks while my gravel rash heals.

Just another day at the office really…

Episode 4 - 'Those' people

I recently became one of 'those' people.  One of those annoying mothers disturbing the peace of the other patrons of a coffee shop with her noisy and unruly offspring.

I used to hate 'those' people with a passion.  I would look across at her, roll my eyes and think, “Can’t she just control her children?”  And God forbid she was meeting a friend, in which case there would be two lots of mess and crazy happening, and from my safe and childfree perch in the world, I would judge away, feeling extremely superior while promising myself “I will NEVER be one of 'those' people...”

It happened.  For the very first time since becoming a mother of two, I ventured out solo to the shops the other day.  After frantically racing around with my double pram, I accomplished all my tasks and decided to reward myself and my boys with a break at a coffee shop.  In hindsight, I should have just gone home, but as every parent knows, when your children behave well for more than 20 minutes, you forget they’re capable of evil.

So I sat at the innocent coffee shop, ordered a muffin and opened a juice box for my 2 year old, who we call Smudge.  While I arranged myself for the near-impossible task of breast feeding the baby in public without flashing every unsuspecting passerby, my talented son sucked juice up through his bendy straw, started a siphon effect, put the juice box down and giggled merrily as the juice began to empty itself all over the table and onto the floor.  I sat helpless on the other side of the table, breast feeding and pinned to my chair.  I hissed empty threats at Smudge, who was well aware I was unable to stop the juicy mess because that would require me to pull the baby off the boob, deal with his screaming and lean over the table in a crowded place with my breast hanging out.

Fortunately for me, a kind Samaritan at the next table came over and straightened the straw, stopping the apple and blackcurrant flow.  He even went to the counter and brought back napkins to mop up the mess.  I couldn’t have thanked him more profusely if he had donated me a kidney.

Just then, my friend arrived with her 2 year old and baby to join us for a cuppa.  Something to note here: ordinary maths does not apply to kids.  2 kids plus 2 kids does NOT equal twice the mess and noise.  It’s more like 2 plus 2 equals 22.

The two toddlers began to immediately argue loudly over the ownership of a care bear, while my friend’s baby disintegrated a muffin into small gooey pieces.  The fight escalated when Smudge threw the care bear over the back of the bench seating, inducing my friend’s toddler into a scream which caused the light fixtures to rattle.  To placate her, a baby-chino was produced.  Said baby-chino was promptly spilt, joining the muffin and juice melee on the table and floor.  An empty baby-chino cup meant more screaming, so a second one was ordered.  And then spilt as well. 

By now, the floor under the table was beginning to resemble a strange, underground lake, and the atmosphere of the coffee shop has turned distinctively frosty.  My friend and I decided to call it a day and strapped our disgruntled and dirty kids back into their strollers.  My only plan was to escape as fast as I could before having to face any of the cafe staff, but one arrived before I could scarper.  She brought a mop and a bucket and a look on her face that clearly read, “Just so you know, I’m a trained barista, not a cleaner.”

So now I know, and I’ll never judge 'those' people again.  Spread the word, be kind to people like us.  After all, we were once like you...