A mother's guilt

Life's full of catch 22 situations when you're a mum. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. I really think midwives should issue a t-shirt to every new mum on the arrival of her first born.

The boy has started day care recently and while I was hesitant to let him out from under my wing, I am on the other hand delighted to do so for various reasons. However, the floodgates I was so anxiously expecting did open and I am not looking forward to a prolonged battle of teary morning drop offs.

He's the kind of boy who's happy to be where he is once he gets there, and once he's comfortable, he's all in and all go, but the reserved, shy side to him isn't quite as brave as he would like to be and his emotions overwhelm him - not surprisingly since I'm such a cool mummy to hang out with hehehe.

And so Monday's and Tuesday's are met with anticipation and apprehension from the both of us. I love the fact he's learning new things and that he has the opportunity to be independent of his mummy, but there's this horrible knot each morning as I leave him there with waterworks in full flight.

I could google the word guilt, however the Concise Oxford definition would no doubt differ from the actual one a mother would pen if it were she who wrote the dictionary.

I am trying to decide if this little challenge is more for him or for me, and I'm concluding that it is for us both, and I think we'll both be enriched and enlightened once we are over the initial shock of not being so joined at the hip.

Shhhhhh

What is that noise? Oh, yeah, it's nothing. Lil' Miss is playing happily on the floor and the Man has just taken the boy off to Grandmas for the afternoon. Lil' Miss and I are delighting in the not often found company of our own silence.

Ah, no, there it goes, I knew it wouldn't last long - "Mummy, why aren't you picking me up"?, she calls, in cheekily disguised baby language" And so I caved, and here I sit one handed typing or hunting and pecking as we used to call it in fifth form typing.

Once again it's been some time since I sat here and did this, but seeing as the house is relatively tidy, and there's only a short while til my chiropractic appointment, I decided, it was time to open the old lappy up for a bit of a rant.

I can't believe how fast the weeks are rolling around, it's already mid-year and the old casseroles are starting to nourish us regularly now. It's great this hearty winter food, definately better than the rabbit food we feed ourselves in the summer, don't get me wrong, I'm all for a good salad, but night after night trying to use up the same old ingredients, becomes a bit blah.

And isn't it nice to sit down at lunch time and tuck into a bowl of lovely home made soup and toast cut into soldiers, yum. Got to have the soldiers. I remember my Grandad used to break up and put his toast in the soup. Yuck, not my cup of tea, not into soggy bread, but what do you know, as if history repeats itself, the boy has decided he likes his soup crumb ridden also.

Ah winter, ah soup, ah silence. Well, at least I know there'll be a good chunk of two of these things at our house.

The boy's growing up

I knew the day would come, the day when I had to cut the ties and let the boy go off into the big wide world of Kindy or Pre school on his own. Friday, the reality hit when I was faced with a phone call from the local daycare where his name has been on the waiting list pretty much since lil' miss came on the scene (it's a popular place). They phoned to advise me that there was an opening, and the boy was at the top of the list for it - two mornings a week 8.30 - 12.30.

Yesterday we met the office lady and next week is his induction where he and I go along together and meet the teachers and have the grand tour.

We've been preparing him for months to the fact that he'll be going to daycare some time in the near future, and so after around five months of waiting, he's become intrigued at the whole concept which is great as he's been a very shy boy in the past, as short a time ago as three or four months I would never have dreamed it being an easy step for him to make, but now I'm feeling slightly easier about it as he's started to come out of his shell more and more in the short time he's been a big brother.

So how am I feeling? Excited for him, but sad for me all rolled into one. I guess it's a lesser version of the feeling a mum gets when her child goes off to school. I'm happy he'll be off doing something fun and learning with that sponge of his, and I'm also excited to be able to spend some alone time with lil' miss, and of course I'll have another time slot to fit more office work in (yay), but for three and a half years, this little man has been not far from my side, and I get the feeling I'm going to feel like a limb has been cut off for a wee while until I get used to it. Because as much as some days he can drive me up the wall, 99% of the time he's a cool little dude and I really love having him hanging around my feet.

Right, time to harden up. He'll be fine, and so will I, but I'm predicting that for me, the best thing about his new life to come as a big day care boy, will be picking him up and bringing him home!

Motherhood on the world wide web

I've been googling a bit recently. I've offered to make a friends wedding cake in February, I've possibly bitten off more than I can chew, but in the back of my mind is that great kiwi saying "she'll be right mate". I've googled so many wedding cakes for inspiration that I'm almost set on what I can and can't achieve, and luckily for me, the bride to be in question is about as far from bridezilla as you could get, so if the big day comes and I rock on up with a jam roll from the supermarket, she'll probably just hand me a beer and say - "ah well, you tried".

To get away from my new found obsession for googling wedding cakes, I decided to google poems about motherhood instead with the intention of posting one on my blog - hey why not? There were loads of them as you could well imagine, and after much deliberation, I settled on this wee funny about being a mum (well, mom actually)...



You Know Your a Mom When...

1. You count the sprinkles on each kid's cupcake to make sure they're equal.

2. You find yourself cutting your husbands' sandwiches into cute shapes.

3. You can't bear to give away baby clothes - it's so final.

4. You hear your mother's voice coming out of your mouth when you say,
"NOT in your good clothes!"

5. You stop criticizing the way your mother raised you.

6. You hire a sitter because you haven't been out with your husband in ages, then spend half the night checking on the kids.

7. You say at least once a day, "I'm not cut out for this job", but you know you wouldn't trade it for anything

Dear Blog

18th of May, surely not, surely I've written in you since then. Double check. Nope, 18th of May it was. How slack is that, I started off with a hiss and a roar, but now, like my washing pile, you've been left neglected as another hour, day, week flutters by.

I do apologise for not popping in sooner, I hope you've not suffered from boredom during my absence. I certainly haven't been bored. Tired, but not bored.

I have been woken from slumber untold times the last week or two as Lil' Miss has been either teething, growth spurting or sick. She even managed to wake her big bro one night with her 2am antics. She's not much of a crier, more of a 'hey I'm awake and I'd love some company, can you hear me... huh hmm, hello..." kind of a gal. Last night was the best sleep I've had for quite some time. 10pm right through until 3.45am - woop woop! Lucky for everyone else in the family because Mummy - sleep = grumpy monster, and although aside from the fact that I'm not a morning person, the man in particular has learnt to be extra tipey toey around his sleep deprived Mrs.

So Blog, hopefully from that small summary you'll see why I've not been the ideal blogger of late. I hope you'll forgive me and not do funny things with my fonts or other shenanigans in order to teach me a lesson for not being as devoted to you as I intended.

Even though this has been short and sweet, I promise I will write again soon, perhaps a little more next time.

Yours

Jo

kiss kiss hug hug

Payment in the form of?

I enjoyed some lovely time out yesterday in the form of a haircut. One whole hour of me time and being pampered was just the icing on the cake.

Now, as much as I want to have alone time, and put motherhood behind me for a short while, there are always those kiddie remnants left behind in my handbag reminding me that there are two mini me's at home who although not with me, are obviously going to be in my thoughts no matter how hard I try.

So, I'd had my hour long 'make over' and trotted on up to the counter feeling, well, pretty shit hot really, it's been at least six months since I even set foot in the hair salon, so needless to say I was feeling like a whole new woman.

Time to pay. I love it how when you go to settle your bill at an establishment, they are in the habit of asking you 'and how would you like to pay for that'? It's pretty obvious that the answer to the question is going to be eftpos, cash or gift voucher. But I wonder what would happen if I requested paying by way of handbag contents? Saturday's handbag was light, I'd manged to take out the nappy, wipes, drink bottle and spare size 3 undies before I left the house, however, with every good handbag comes zip compartments, and very early on in my career as a mother, I obtained the skill of shoving random objects into said compartments. Saturdays handbag also contained the following...

1 x used black drinking straw
1 x one legged army man
1 x drink bottle top
1 x iceblock stick
1 x old style 50c piece
1.5 x (very) soft cracker biscuits
1 x tissue (possibly used)
2 x previous weeks grocery lists
1 x lolly wrapper (guilty)
1 x little pink sock
1 x army man's machine gun

No, probably not much in there worth trying to pay with, but every random object in my handbag comes from a special moment in time, spent with special little people, and that's why, no matter where I am, they'll always be along for the ride.

Snuggles

As the weather cools down, and the nights get that little bit longer, it's starting to feel just that little bit more snuggly. The boy is over snuggling now that he's three, except on the odd occasion that he might hurt himself, or feel unwell. And lil' miss isn't quite at the snuggly stage yet, she's big enough to wrap your arms around but of course at five months, hasn't quite caught onto the concept of snuggling for the sake of snuggling.

I do manage to get the odd sneaky snuggle in with the boy in the form of when he's all wrapped up in a towel after a shower - kind of cheating in the snuggle stakes, but I'll take what I can get. There's something special about a kid in a towel all warm and smelling nice rather than freezing cold because they've been playing in the puddles at 5pm or smelly because they've been playing in the mud - both activities totally irresistible to three year old boys.

Winter is great. Most people prefer summer, but in all honesty, I border on being a winter girl myself. Not that I'm a ski bunny or anything close, in fact, far from it, but I quite enjoy the dark nights, heater on, winter food - especially soup, kids in fleecy jammies, the adrenaline of the speed in which one has to dry oneself upon stepping out of the shower in order not to have to leap straight back in to warm up.

I've always enjoyed a nice hot long shower, another reason why winter is the perfect time of year for me. Being a mother now too, only adds to the niceness of the 'me-time' in the 900 x 900 square box of a shower. I've got clever too. I used to be a morning shower gal but with morning showers, the man is usually at work by shower time, and so with it usually comes "muuuuuuuuuuuum", and it's just not the same having the door opened mid shampoo rinse to disassemble a toy harbouring another toy jambed inside. So now, needless to say, I've switched to evening bathing. In peace and quite. It's quite a luxury, as only a mother would know. And just like snuggles with a three year old, I kind of cheat at showers too, you see, I am able to stay in just that bit longer at night, as by the time his head hits the pillow, the man is fast asleep, oblivious to the fact that water conservation is not my forte. (Sorry Green party, but we all have our once vice).