About a Girl

My Auntie reckons every mother needs a daughter. I’m 100% stoked with my two boys but sometimes I wonder what I will miss out on if I don’t ever have a daughter and I catch myself thinking of what she might be like. I have a friend who has a cheeky ragamuffin of a girl who reminds me of myself as a carefree little kid and when I see her it really hits me the most.In my head her given names are picked out already “Sunday Oprah” or maybe the other way ‘round. She’d be dressed just like her Mum, in cargos or slouch pants with sweet frilly tops and a pair of sneakers. I’d do her hair up so nice with funky parts and lots of plaits. She’d be blith and bold.Maybe my little stash of size one girls clothes will be handed on to pregnant girlfriends one day…and…maybe not…

Man I’m eating the healthiest lunch! I made a big yummy salad with lemon and honey dressing and I’m eating it on top of buckwheat pasta with veges and baby spinach and butter and soy sauce. Yum!! (Not quite as good as Nick’s though.) Bit more nutritious than the banana pancakes and cream I ate the entire day yesterday!

I’ve been allocated the job of caring for Izzy’s Digimon while he’s at school. I thought no worries just feed it every now and again. But bloody hell it’s a high maintenance little critter! It’s forever bleating at me needing medication or training or calling me into do battle on it’s behalf. Geez I’m glad his Version 3’s on the blink and the tamagotchi got baby slobber in it or I’d be a slave to the virtual pets! How 2007!

I think Bubby is about to bust a tooth out! Wuhoo!! It’s a top one! He’s a non-conformist too!!

Beautiful Boy

I know you’re all pretty fond of the kids in your own family and all, but I really do feel sorry for all the people out there who don’t know my Bubby.

It’s hard to find the words to express how precious he is. He’s the most scrumptious little sweetheart, so beautiful and spirited.

He loves life – he laughs loudly, he eats hungrily, he beholds things in amazement. He laps up all the good stuff. He kisses like he’s watched too many soapies, he grunts loudly on the potty and laughs at his own farties. He whistles and sings (he sounds like Maggie off the Bananas), and screams for fun, he screws up his nose and snorts!

Lately he’s been expressing just how much he loves me too. When I’m holding him up against my side (I don’t know why but I can only carry Bubbas on my left), he lays his little head down on my shoulder for a while. Especially when there’s people around whom he’s not quite sure of yet. He snuggles his head down and looks up at them through his long dark lashes, safe with his Mumma – it makes me feel SO good! He’s always having so much fun with his family – he loves us ALL. He wants his Daddy and his Mummy and his Bruss all at once.

Last night he was laughing hysterically and zooming around in his walker as Izzy crawled after him. It makes me so proud to see how gentle and loving Isaiah is with his Little Bruss – he makes any sacrifice without a moments hesitation if it’s for the good of the Bubby.

I can’t believe there was a time when I didn’t know his perfect little face. Now I feel like I’d curl up and die without him.

Missn My Man

I miss my man! I know he lives here but I haven’t seen a lot of him lately. He’s off to work before I’ve even rubbed my eyes in the morning and in the arve he’s been busy getting the shed organized (a good thing I know!) and then he’s always going off to sleep the same time Bubby does on the loungeroom floor!

This weekend will be a blitz of visitors again. Greg’s Mum, Dad and brother are bringing tressles and coming to help out and stay a night or two. Izzy’s Dad is coming for a visit, not sure if he’s bringing his girlfriend. Catching up with an old bestie and meeting her new man on Sunday and maybe another couple as well. Plus some more besties have land down this way and usually come for a visit on the weekends, I’m expecting them too. Man I need to have a guest room built up in that shed! It’s either exceedingly quiet around here – just me and Anakin, or completely nuts and busting at the seams!

I guess that means Greg will be job supervisor all weekend and I’ll be caterer extraordinaire and I won’t get to be with him in forever!! And until I get some of his undivided attention I’ve still got my boys. Anakin loves his mummy so much and is such a little smoogie man. He’s an absolute pleasure to behold. So delightful and content, a charming little chappy as always. And Izzy puts up with me as long as I’m a good audience and have a listening ear while he rambles on about WWE vs ECW, Batista, Chris Benoit, Rey Masterio, John Cena and Tripple H, The Undertaker and Kurt Angle and the big tubby Cowboy, Rod Van Dam, Eddie Gurera, Randy Orton… I do listen, you can tell.

(Uh-oh, dance night tonight, and out comes the disenfranchised brat in me. No, I’ll behave and try real hard too!)

Hair today Gone tomorrow

I’ve got one of those Katie Cruise fringes. All the regrowth from loosing so much hair after Anakin was born. It’s noticeable to me but I’ve got the most untamed, flyaway hair I don’t think anybody else would. But I’m just glad it’s growing back!

When I was pregnant my hair was thick and lustrous – I’m sure I never lost one strand. I barely even had to wash it (but I did all the time out of habit, I’ve got this bit of a phobia about my hair getting dirty – I wash it anywhere – at friends houses, out in the yard under the hose, in the creek, I’ve got a big stash of those mini shampoos), it just didn’t get greasy. It was beautiful! I miss it!

Then I began breastfeeding and I think I lost about nine months worth. And it’s still coming out in handfuls – Bubby’s handfuls!! Every chance he gets he rips it out. I was carrying him up on my shoulders around the yard yesterday and I could actually hear the follicles getting twanged out of my scalp. I’m going to pay him back when his grows enough! He’s got a sweet little “cupie” at the moment, like TinTin. Hardly enough to yank though .

Glorious AND Prolific

And there draws a close to another weekend, aside from a short but ferocious bout of the squirts from too much frangelico and a marathon nightmare about that idiot “teabag” from Prison Break it was a glorious and prolific one.

Glorious because it was a weekend filled with family. Me and Nick took the kids shopping (Kmart is no longer stocked with any wrestling cards) and to visit Nanna and Granddad. We had fish and chips and salad down at the skatepark on the beachfront for family night with Mum. Chuckles had a sleepover. Iz and Georgie had one of there ongoing monopoly wars. I made a huge pancake breakfast for nine! Kids swam and wrestled and jumped on the tramp and argued about wrestling and smoogied the baby.

(This is what an eavesdrop on the boys sounds like when they’re recapping the days wrestling injuries:

“Did ya hear my back crack when Jack jumped on me? I think I fractured a diskgliche and it fragmented into my spinal column!” “Oh yeah and what about when Jack hooked his ulcer on the fence!” "Yeah and how 'bout Bubby elbowing me in the blowhole!"

I’m not up on what a “diskgliche” is or how you “hook an ulcer” when you don’t even have one to hook.)

Prolific because after the weekends hunting and gathering my miserable looking fruitbasket and fridge is now in abundance with rambutans, pineapples, sugarplums, grapes, mangoes, avocados, bananas, eggplant, sugarsnaps, snowpeas…(not to mention chocolate and croissants and cake…)

And prolific because Greg and his fellow welding friend spent their entire weekend working on the shed. Hurray! Bravo! Hurrah! It’s going to be so big it’ll overshadow our little modest house! Oh well at least it will be a well organized diminutive domicile. Hee hee har har har.

Fighting the Odds to get Funky

I’ll tell you one thing; my brain is definitely not hardwired to perform the complex arrangement of dance movements I’m expected to in Wednesday night Funk classes. It’s just not. I thought maybe I’d get better at it given a chance, but each time it’s something completely new and I can’t get it. It’s hard. And fast. I end up just dancing around in everyone’s faces like a disempowered brat.

I did this personality test in a staff meeting once. I’m one of those types that has an extreme intolerance for authority. Most of us end up in jail. This fraction of a percent get through Uni’ so I was really fighting against the odds there, I knew that already – I even had lecturers going out of their way to tell me I had a personality disorder.

I have difficulty in taking orders – maybe that’s got something to do with it. Greg’s a bit the same, he would’ve been a champion basketball player by now except that he was deemed “uncoachable”. Huh, maybe we do have something in common! We’re both a couple of mavericks.

More likely I’m just un-co’. I’ve picked up the local gym program in the hopes that a step aerobics class is more within my apparently limited range of physical motion. Wish me luck.

Clockwork Orange

I love our little routine through the week. Yep we’ve finally got one after 7 months of going with the flow and taking it how it comes. Often it all starts at about 3am in the morning when Greg sometimes gets up to do some yoga stretches and takes Anakin to the potty. Bubby returns to bed and then Greg snuggles in a bit later, until his alarm goes off at 5.45 (Beyonce singing Crazy – man I’m sick of that song!) Then Greg takes Bub for number twos which he leaves in the potty for me to flush later. Then they spend a little time together eating brekky. When Greg has to leave for work he plops Anakin back in bed with me and that well puckered up morning kiss I’ve told you about takes place.

Izzy is usually up by then so me and Bub get up after he has a bit of Titty. Bub cruises around in his walker dropping all his snacks on the floor or plays on one of his play rugs while I fix Izzy up some yummy brekkie (usually a bowl of fruit and a pancake or cereal), then pack his lunch for school. Once I’ve got that done I sort out some nappies and Bubby has a bath in his red bucket out in the lounge room. Izzy has to do his jobs – take out the scrap bucket, empty the rubbish, feed his dog and do a bit of homework. Then he mooches around watching tellie, feeding marchflies to spiders or playing with Anakin. At quarter to 8 Iz trudges down to the bottom of the driveway where he gets picked up by the school bus and we wave him goodbye.

Bubby is asleep again by 8.30am and usually stays that way for an hour or two. That’s when I have a chance to eat my breakfast (a cup of passionfruit and mug of green tea this morning which I’m going to back up with some battered bread, cream and maple syrup), get a couple of jobs done and then plonk myself down for some computer time.

When Bub wakes up from his sleep we usually do some housework or yardwork together after a big wrestle and a giggle and a smoodgy. Today I tackled the pong in the fridge, yesterday we did a bit of weeding. Then we do all sorts of stuff until it’s time to watch our soapie (Bridget and Nick just get back together already!!). Bubby practices his talking “huwomum” and “oo-oo-ahr-ahr”, like a little chimp, and his whistling, and his kissing and maneuvering techniques, and he tries to grow a tooth and he wreaks havoc in the kitchen and he broadens his dietary repertoire and then it’s time for another big sleepie. Mummy preps dinner, hangs up washing and cleans up messes. Sometimes we visit Auntie Nick and Chuckles. And then we both hang out for Izzy to come home. Then we hang out for Daddy to come home…

Monday and Fridays are Izzy’s hiphop nights (when he’s not too lazy). Tuesday nights are Greg’s basketball nights (when he’s not injured!) And Wednesday nights are my funk classes. (I always go – and it’s my turn tonight!)My weekday routine is a bit lacking in a couple of areas though – a regular grocery shopping day (yep it takes all day), at the moment it gets done in dribs and drabs and morning tea with the ladies. We are yet to pick up the tradition this year and I miss them! And the good food! I should spent some more of my time doing exercise too (Elemental, you almost had me inspired!) or I’m going to end up on Telletubbies, I’m a little porkchop !That’s how our days roll…and I’m not about to trade it for work anytime soon, so quit asking .

Is Fresh? Is Good!

Now my baklava has been known to pull out caps but the almond biscotti I made on Sunday is hard enough to snap off whole teeth I reckon! Bubby is safe as he still hasn’t got any yet. He likes them, they’re a bit like rusks to him, actually they’re more like rocks!

I’m usually a fairly good cook, so it sucks when recipes backfire on me. My cooking usually turns out a lot better when I just freestyle it.Last night I tweeked a Jamie Oliver recipe “Rigatoni with Sweet Tomatoes, Aubergine and Mozzarella” and added bacon, pumpkin, climbing spinach, capsicum and zucchini. We didn’t eat it with rigatoni either, we ate it with ravioli. I suppose it wasn’t like the original recipe at all, but it was way better.

Me and Greg are big fans of Jamie Oliver. In particular I love how Jamie Oliver encourages shoppers not to scrimpe on quality in regard to produce, because this backs me up in another of mine and Greg’s ongoing domestic disputes. I do most of the grocery and market shopping because I do most of the cooking and I spend up big too because I like to have loads of fresh yummy healthy stuff in the kitchen, so we’re less tempted to eat rubbish. I buy real maple syrup and real vanilla essence, not the dodgy artificial kind. I don’t hesitate in buying big bags of fresh macadamia nuts and cashews, expensive dragon fruits, sugar plums and gold kiwis that the kids love. Occasionally we have to throw out the odd piece of taro or handful of grapes, but that happens when you buy so much fresh stuff. Greg’s idea of food shopping is to bring home a big variety of 2L bottles of softdrink to mix with his moonshine and 5 or so bags of black and gold cheesy-poofs to get washed down with his moonshine. Real nutritious hey? Cheap though and won’t go off either! Lucky he’s got me looking after him.

Co-Sleeping equals Missionary

Me and my man love to go at it like the rest of you, but with a sleeping 7 month old in the bed our love life is, let me put it this way, a lot less freaky than it use to be (when it’s happening in the bedroom anyway).Yes, there is a spy in the House of Love...Man, they’re tiny little things really (babies!) but it’s deceiving how much of the bed they occupy! We’re basically restricted to having to stack ourselves on top of one another, no chance of shifting about as the mood takes us and climaxing with any kind of gusto is a big no-no - the commotion is bound to wake up the little sucker and then it’s all over rover whether we like it or not! Lordie!(I know, I know! He’s got a cot! It’s just more of a play-pen and a laundry basket at the moment and his mummy is too much of a soft-touch to put him in it.)

Awake is the New Sleep

Do you ever have dreams where you are agonizingly aware that you’re dreaming and you try desperately to wake yourself up? When I’m getting freaked out in a dream I can usually concentrate really hard on peeling my eyes open and somehow I manage to. The other night I dreamt I was in the middle of this waterscape – lagoons and ponds and quagmires everywhere, this was unsettling me because crocodiles have a habit of surfacing in my watery dreams, so I began to focus all my energies on waking. I was rubbing my eyes hard as walruses lumbered out of the water and fish flip-flopped around, I expanded my eyes as wide as they would go as little ‘gators and grey crocs began to emerge. I tried everything I could with all my might, but I was trapped there in my dream, uneasy and struggling at the mercy of all that was unfolding before me. Then, with one small brush of my babies face against me, I was as wide awake as I could possibly be, in a nanosecond.

It’s amazing how tuned in a mother is to her babies needs. So many times I have woken from sleep a moment before Isaiah’s form appears in my dark doorway or a moment before he begins to turn my doorknob or just before he calls out “Marm”.

Mmmm, I’m enjoying a big steamy thermal of coffee with a generous slurping of frangelico, it’s delicious. Would you like? I don’t think it will cause a malfunction of our motherly intuition…maybe a smidgen, but I doubt it.

Please don't rain, please don't rain, please don't rain...

With Aunt Flo returns MoJo

Ahrr, cuppa tea and cake time. Bubby is in the aircon’ having his third sleep of the day after tearing around in his walker rubbing his dried banana over the furniture, a swim in the kitchen sink, a big kissy wrestle with Mummy in front of B&B (we have Imarja so it’s on at 12.30 n please don’t tell me what’s happening we’re a bit behind!), a play with Duplo and the Xbox remotes, a paddle in his wading pool underneath the shady trampoline, a Lift n Look book, a check-up on the workers up at the “shed” (I’m doing a Greg), and overseeing some mopping of the floors and the baking and icing of a carrot cake. What a busy-bee!


And with the menstruation returns the MoJo! Woohoo! I’m quite the rabid dog! I’ve been hankering around after Greg panting, I can’t look at him without clenching my teeth hard and growling! It helps that he’s been a Man Of Action lately, he’s much sexier than his alter ego The Dopey Guppy. All my life I’ve have had relationships with poetic types and muso’s to get my hands on my very own Max Steel with big yummy muscles and rough workin’man hands is mmmmm, grind grind. Sometimes I miss the serenading and poetry and ardent love letters I once received but I’d never trade it for the occasional bit of graffiti art I get from Greg…The thought of him at work with grime all over him, sparks flying everywhere and his welding shield on…WELL!!

Cause for Celebration

Mum dropped off about 10 kilos of rambutans yesterday. She looks after me. Sometimes it’s passionfruit, sometimes it’s pawpaws or longans but my all time favourites are rambies. YUM!! I’ll have a monodiet until they’re all gone! (And sugar diabetes!) All she got was a piece of tea cake with cream. Who’s getting the raw deal? (Well she did get lots of kisses from her yummy Creambun too!)

Bubby has been hooking into his tucker. He’s been having sugar plums or mango mushed into his rice cereal and avocado and banana (very ripe ones!) mashed up together. He loves chewing on goji berries and his herb stalks of course.

Hey guess what? All the formwork is being done for our shed!! We are going to have a slab on Friday!!! (The concrete kind.) I don’t know how long it will take for the rest as Greg is doing the owner/builder thing and he runs on “Island time” (it was promised to be totally completed by Christmas. Greg was even in the habit of talking about it like it was already there {a bit like the marriage he hasn’t even made a proposal for} “that’s my shed” – where there was just an excavated flat spot up on the bank!) But I’m so excited to see some progress. Maybe I’ll get a chance to clear out the house sometime soon and my little car “Dash” won’t have to be out in the rain anymore. The first thing I’ll need up there is a sports closet. We have squash rackets, tennis rackets, cricket bats, softball gear, footy balls, basketballs, gym balls, leg weights, hockey sticks and a spinner and the rest, all floating around our tiny house at the moment… We have to shuffle around sideways half the time!!

My second period arrived – a big river of red! There was 52 days between my first and second cycle postpartum.Bubby went to his first big party on the weekend. A celebration of the engagement of 2 beautiful friends. He stayed awake for the whole 2 hours it took for us to drive there so we only stayed for an hour before it was over to Alkie Uncle Christo’s for beddie-bye time. (Not Greg – I picked him up at 4 in the morning! He’d crashed out in bed with the Groom-to-be! Luckily not the Bride-to-be!!) It was funny to see Anakin being showered with kisses from all these big muscley fellas – they love him and Greg loves a chance to show him off too. Bubby had grabbed a ribboned helium balloon on the way through the entrance and spent the whole time pulling and batting it in quick succession. Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang…

Cashed Up Bogans/Local Vernacular

Issy was deeply affected by a story he saw on the affluence of Cashed Up Bogans and he has decided he no longer wants to be a store manager at EB games but a bricklayer with a suped-up ride – a Dodge Viper with nitrous tanks or a Chrysler 300C, luxury sedan. He wants to have a mullet like Joe Dirt, wear a flanny and smoke White Ox. Geez I better not let him see Kenny or he’ll think you gain social prominence and great wealth being a portiloo specialist and driving a liquid waste removal truck!

Issy is an absolute classic. I love hearing about his take on what happens at school. I barely ask him how class was but rather “What did you play at lunchtime Iz?” The other afternoon he tells me “Billy Bombs called quits Mum, too wet!” And because I take an interest in probing into his life away from home, I knew exactly what he meant. Lately they’ve been playing brandy, but he’s realized that’ll be cast aside for something else soon enough, gang-up tiggy, handball, kick-the-can, fish-outta-water, or his very own “Billy Bombs” and that games have their season and then are recycled for another day, just like the shows on tellie. For us it would have been a cycle of beanie, seveners, hopstcotch, elastic, marbles, red-red-rover and stuck-in-the-mud. But that was back in the day. (Sounds like every one of my entries could be called “Back in the Day” the way I’ve been reminiscing lately!)

I went to a little bush school up the road from an Aboriginal community, so there were plenty of Aboriginal kids, plus a varying medley of other cultures as well. The references that ended up being embedded in our everyday speech were so localized I reckon an outsider would have a hard time understanding our meaning. There was this allegory amongst us school kids about a one-armed man called “Ernie Reefmulla” and it was the biggest insult to say “Ah ya Reefmulla!” and if anyone had a haircut they’d get teased “you bin ta Olga Murphy eh?” Everyone said it! It wasn’t until years later that I realized Olga Murphy was a hair salon in town and I actually met Ernie Reefmulla and he was just a normal guy! (With one arm.)

Our principal was fiercely devoted to our unbeatable reputation as the district ballgames champions, we trained hard, everyday, for hours. We were guns! We also spent hours maintaining the school gardens. We were the groundsmen as well as the pupils. Considering my school life and the little amount of time we actually spent in the classroom as well as my mothers non-English speaking background it’s a wonder I have any grasp of proper English at all.

But I think I do. And the ever changing vernacular that gets around. But I would never use language as a means to exclude someone. (That’s why if a word has more than three syllables I ask Greg if it’s okay if I use it first. ) But you know I hate all this LOL n RATFLMAO, it’s just stupid. I mean are you really rolling on the floor and laughing aloud? No, I think not!

I’d really like to make my own smiley though. It’d be pulling that face, you know the one where you cram your tongue down into the space inside your mouth under your bottom lip and push it out with a moronic look in your eyes. I’d use that one all the time. Huh!I think I better put myself to bed. I’m getting all frenetic like Bubby when he’s overtired!

Whatever Nevermind

I spent hours dragging the furniture ‘round last night. One side of our bed is now pressed firmly against the wall! From my bed I’m staring at Gustav Klimt’s “The Kiss” on the wall rather than the amazing greenery of the outdoors.

But the important thing is that Bubby has less of a chance to nosedive out of bed. Without having to jam pack pillows all around us and on the odd chance that Bubby will let me have my boob back I may have a chance to actually lie comfortably in bed! ie curled tightly in the fetal position with one elbow crooked under my head and the other hand palm down under my cheek, knees drawn up tight with my feet crossing over each other. Ahh makes me all relaxed just thinking about it, but I won’t get my hopes up!

With Bubby’s propensity to the Titty the odd occasion for my own personal comfort arises rarely and fleetingly! I’m most often lying in all these obscure configurations trying to do mental affirmations that circumstances aside I would choose to lie like that. It doesn’t really work, I think I need to see a chiropractor bad!! Never mind, I’m a self-sacrificing mother we do this kind of stuff all the time…

PJays all day's not Layzay!

I’m starting to drool as soon as my head hits the pillow lately, I don’t even have to be asleep! I was so stoked the other morning because I got to sleep between midnight (when I went to bed) until 4.20 in one stretch. That was friggn awesome. Usually I’m waking every couple of hours at least to shuffle Anakin around the bed or jam pillows under my elbows to feed him comfortably or haul him from one titty over to the other or change his nappy or wake up Daddy to take him to the potty or close the windows against the rain or untangle the dog’s chain…

But I still can’t bring myself to sleep with him in the day time – my own time is too valuable – even more than sleep.Issy was giving me grief this morning about having to tidy up his room before catching the bus! He had a good old whinge about it first, then he tried to shift the blame onto his cousin, then he tried to tell me I don’t do anything all day long either! Even though I just made him a pancake breakfast with maple syrup, mango and whipped cream, packed him a delicious lunch for school – tomato pesto bread, cashews, an apple, a carrot, some more homemade brownies, sesame snaps and a stringer. In between feeding Bub and giving him a bath! He got his well cleaned uniform of a neatly stacked pile off his desk, he doesn’t even have to rifle through his other clothes – they’re just there, all laid out for him. He gets driven all over the country side to be with his friends and to do extra curricular stuff! He gets help with his homework, even when he doesn’t want it. He gets his bloody feet rubbed at night before bed. Little Ingrate! I may stay in my pyjamas all day but it doesn’t mean I do nothing!! Ugh! He shouldn’t have messed with me this morning! No Neighbours or Biggest Loser till that room is done! (Jeez I’m on a role with the venting… ) But he’s a beautiful big brother I’ll give him that! He’ll do anything for Little Bruss…

As soon as Bubby gets a bit grunty on the potty he goes! And to save having a wet nappy is as simple as taking him out on the grass or holding him above the toilet and saying “Do a pee-pee!” and no matter how much he’s got he’ll squeeze it out for you. You’re TRICKY!