Traitor! Sellout!

"The Crime":
I.bought.a.PRAM..

I!, who am the biggest advocate and devotee of babywearing, still toting my 19mo around town in an ergo, breastfeeding and napping, for hours on end.. and loving it!
And always looking to (and successfully in quite a few cases) convert even the most mainstream of mummies into at least part time babywearers, with a sort of religious or activist zealousness..

And not just any pram, but one of those ludicrously expensive european ones..
Have I become one of those latte-sipping toorak yummy mummy types, with docile or aggravated child consigned to a far away pram. Have i become one of those mums?

Well even if i haven't, i'll certainly look like one now... I'll be a crunchy mama in mainstream clothing.

Here's the crime scene..

"Oh, How Could You?"
Well first of all, i got it second hand for much less than retail. Although, ok, it's still much more than your basic umbrella stroller, and arguably much unnecessarily more.
But my recent paid employment makes this possible, without having to justify it to DH or ask him nicely for money, even if i'm entitled to it.

Okay, i'm just going to launch into my justification for this.
We'd all agree that a wheeled device for toting your child around is sometimes a necessary and useful contraption (eg neighbourhood or park walks, grocery or market shopping, long trips to a shopping centre, full days out in town).

There are times when even if you have a great carrier permanently attached to your hips, occasionally you'll want your child off your body for a while (say 1 hour in 3?), especially when he's fallen asleep.
No matter how well distributed the weight is, it's still 11 kgs on top of my 52kg frame (that's just under 1/5th of my weight!), and after 4 hours, i'm just exhausted, especially if i have to carry the groceries + nappy bag as well!! (Sometimes plus a small dog on a leash.. What can i say, we all love our outings).

(We've never had any luck with a normal pram/stroller, as he'll decide he's had enough after 20mins, and never go back in again.. more on why in a minute).

We go out for half-days on end, walking all around in his little red trike (parent handle and steering) at the park or suburbs, getting several kms under our feet. If we go shopping, he'll sit in a shopping trolley.
In both cases, he'll sit happily for hours, looking around, talking to me, eating snacks.
Meanwhile, I'll always be wearing the ergo carrier, and when he's sleepy, i'll carry him around while he naps, while pulling along a childless trike or supermarket trolley... and feeling quite physically burdened after an hour or two.

So, why this pram then?:
I've looked at his trike and the supermarket trolley, and wondered why he'll stay in those for hours, but not his usual pram.
And i extrapolated..: in both, he's physically and visually exposed, not physically constrained (or much restrained) by anything except a thin bar. He feels fairly free, I suppose, important for a feisty one like himself.
And in the trolley, he's right up there where all the cool stuff is, and close to me. We talk, sing, play, kiss, all throughout our outing (just like in a baby carrier).

Whereas in a pram, he hates the semi-reclined position they all have, and feeling so enclosed by the pram walls, and being so far away down on the ground away from everyone and everything.

So i looked for a pram which has these same features, and found that this was the only one..

It has a very high seat, as you can see, and is reversible, so he sits facing me at my chest level.
It sits very upright (not seen in the pic), so he's completely sitting upright, not reclining in the least.
And there's nothing around his head or body, no fabric or seat frame to make him feel enclosed (that hood you see folds way back, and even the bar is optional).
= ie. he'll probably be quite likely to travel happily in this one!

Plus an added bonus for me: it goes up/down stairs! (the wheel struts fold up to become like a 2wheeled dolly)

So i figure... this pram, if it works for us, allows us:
- some of the benefits of babywearing - staying connected and interactive, child can see all goings-on and be part of adult interactions, no stair hassles;
- plus the benefits of a pram (not having to carry him while he sleeps; not having to stop if he wants to sit by himself and snack; not having to carry groceries/diaper bag).

and of course i'd still bring the ergo to carry him for his frequent-boobing or boobing-to-sleep (which is generally the only times he wants "up!")

And if it turns out not to work, it should resell for what i paid for it.
Okay, I've gotten this off my chest and conscience =)

my current projects

outside - i repotted a lovely little tree outside our rumpus window, a potted courtyard tree that the previous owners left as it had totally grown out of its pot and had sent big roots out the bottom and under the brick paving.
it's a pretty little thing, delicate and slender and very flowery (imagine the prettiness of its dryad!), so i didn't want to lose it. it went deciduous for the winter and i thought it had finally carked it. but lately it had put out promising little buds, so i thought i'd better save it while the time was right.

so i lifted the bricks from around its base, removed the paving sand, shattered the pot with a hammer (this was fun), marvelled at how big the roots were which had burst out from the confines of the small pot.. then made a high collar from edging plastic, added lots of yummy new garden soil, mulched it,.. and now it's sitting tucked in the comfiest snuggest high bed, sitting in clover (figuratively, although clover is an excellent nitrogen fixed green-manure).

i did the same thing to a big climbing rose in our driveway bed; then made its whole area into a new raised bed by carting 14 bluestone blocks from a secret stash i'd discovered in our courtyard.. (those things is heaVY!) and popped in some new nursery-bought plants - passionfruit, blueberry, bare-rooted blackberry, and ornamental pear tree (for shade and prettiness). and dumped in a trailerload of new soil.
i have big hopes for my new plants....

next is 2 barerooted plum trees (greengage and king billy) and an apple tree (fuji), and barerooted raspberry plants which i planted last month but should redo in a raised mound.
also seedlings in the vegie bed i made, onions and shallots and broccolini (there's already new strawberries and parsley and garlic and baby spinach).

i have big hopes, but not a terribly good prognosis. when it comes to plants, i do lots of reading, but i hope and dream more than i execute or understand..
so i've given them good soil and water.. mother earth will have to help me out now.

(hehee, dandan says: "cxxxv fvd55")

Knitting projects..
i finished the loveliest raglan jumper for dan; the body is this beautiful handspun variegated dyes yarn (Noro!) in blues and purples with the odd rust and green hue; the sleeves are very dark purple.
i finished it (quite an achievement!), but the neckline was too big, a bit off-shouldery. he wore it anyway, goddammit, but needed a scarf to protect his necky bits.
so anyway i popped it back on the needles to add a textured shawl collar. it's almost there! fun times...

and for myself (heck i deserve it), a bright red shrug in bamboo yarn; maybe short sleeves, maybe elbow length, i haven't decided yet. it would have matched my previous black hair; here's hoping it goes with this brown.

and i bought 2 big skeins of pure cashmere online ($36 for 150g!), a lush thick aran yarn; one pure black, one dark heathery grey; either one will go into my next scarf project - a lush fat overly fringey neck wrap with a badass button/badge.

our re-zenification

i was a working mum all of last week.. i actually kinda enjoyed the work part, except that it meant i saw so little of him. i missed him greatly, and was very glad it was just for one week..

But the first few days back into our normal routine was hard.. Whenever something becomes optional, it instantly becomes much harder than otherwise.. just cos when things get rough (in our case it's whininess or general difficulty getting anything done, duh on me for even trying), you immediately find yourself thinking "arghhh.... maybe i could send him to grandma's.. I don't have to be doing this".
Without the option of checking out, you instantly try to find ways to make it better, better approaches, better attitudes. You start the day with a determination to enjoy it no matter what happens.

Anyway we found our groove again (ie motherhood zen..).
Yesterday was fantastic..
We went to the toy library and filled up on bulky and expensive toys which we'd never have bought ourselves (they're toys with a short shelf-life of high enjoyment, but take up half your living room and are $200 of plastic). Then dan napped in the car while we parked by the river; i knitted and watched mothers and their babies at the cafe.

Then we walked by the river - the aforementioned duck play, playing with leaves and twigs and talking to trees (which i love him doing and have actively encouraged and modelled; i want him to become a tree hugging hippie) and even finding a fat green caterpillar, so picturesque it could have crawled right off the pages of "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" (which i can recite verbatim now, try me anytime).

Then we found a great big wooden playground. dan's still so non-independent; he wants to literally hold my hand for everything; walking on the ground, climbing little stairs, crossing a bridge.
i feel so mean-mommy for frequently extricating my hand from his little soft paw, and saying "dandan can walk by himself" (i picture him looking up at me and saying "how come you never want to hold my hand, mummy?").
because i secretly love holding his fat soft warm little paw; and i secretly prefer seeing him walk up and down steps like an adult because i'm holding his hand, than having to wait while he dirties his woolly pants sitting and shuffling down dirt steps.

forget everytime i've complained about him. i just crazy love him to bitses..

what i did yesterday

Well.. i coloured my hair! It's been virgin black for the last year, so much that 3/4 of my hair is actually in that state.. which is big when you realise that i haven't had more than 2 inches of regrowth virgin hair since i was 17...
Over the lifetime of my hair, it's been bleached pale yellows and even a bright orange once, lots of bright punk colours (purple, red, pink, blue) allover or just in sections, lots of society highlights of caramels and beiges, many shades of mahogany or auburn or some vivid reddish brown, and all the flat browns of the spectrum.

Now it's just a boring medium brown... but i feel a visual relief when i look in the mirror now; black hair and paleish skin might have been cool in a sleek dramatic sort of way, but it made me feel so washed out, and i'm sure i looked tired and unkempt (which i was, don't get me wrong).

duckies

Right now i'm obsessed with ducks..
Dandan and i went to the riverside yesterday, and hung out with a gaggle of duckies all crazed by being fed by friendly visitors.
People would turn up every 30mins with a half bagful of bread (and expensive bread like wondersoft at $3.50 a bag, fresh and fluffy... that makes the frugal side of me twitch. even i only buy home brand for my own family..), and the ducks would flock around and peck at their hands and pockets, and literally tear the bread out of their hands. It was great fun to watch, and dandan had such a blast..
But. this one guy was telling me how they come every week now to do this, as now that it's winter the ducks are literally starving. "See how it's grabbing it out of your hands? it's desperate, starving. that's biology".
I made suitably alarmed and sympathetic sounds, but couldn't help wonder if it was actually doing the ducks any real favours. He did end off by saying "the problem is that as the ducks get used to being fed by humans, they don't try as hard to find food like weeds at the bottom of the pond....".
I looked it up when i got home (Google is your friend), and it's true - feeding wild ducks is strongly not recommended, it makes them a) less independent and less able to find their own food; b) fatty in the organs (eg foie gras) and very prone to early deaths, in epidemic proportions; c) overbreed and form an unstable unsustainable population. etc etc.
An American site even offered pdfs of official government warning signs to stick up at your local park warning against this practice.
So there you go. Bummer though, it's such a joy. But it's ok (ie less harmful) to feed them corn, so maybe people could just start doing that instead.. White bread is bad for anything.

Anyway, this is by means of a big fat segue into my ongoing obsession with backyard livestock. Our local council shot a big hole in my dreams; having requested the relevant bylaws, i bring it out every few days and gaze mournfully at it. The spacing requirements they have for a poultry house (chickens and ducks, y'all) mean that i literally cannot fit it onto my little plot. And of course, "large animals" are out of the question, even if it be the sweetest dwarf cow.

And i have a gaggle of nosy neighbours. Because of the highish density of my corner of suburbia, i have 3 neighbours on one side, 2 behind me, and the normal amount on the other sides. i don't know if i could sneak anything by them...

But.. i feel quite determined to have a duck. i mean, they're often indoor pets, right? and they don't smell like chooks can.
I envisage.. a little paddling pool in the courtyard, a little doghouse for its bedding. all of us waddling around in a gleeful bliss.

I also read some cool stuff about aquaponics. One could even raise rainbow trout!, while simultaneously growing a lush forest of vegetables. Backyard aquaponics, it's the most sustainable and low-footprint method of raising meat available on the planet.
I might do this sometime in the future. But right now i'm just finding the info about raising fish just so full of technical blather about boring pumps and pipes..

"and how was your day?"

i'm starting a new series along the lines of "what we did today", just cos - it may not seem profound enough to put down on paper, but every day, no matter how mundane and ordinary, has a touch of the magical about it when you're a parent.
and i guess it's the little things i'll really miss when these days are long past..

hair, motherhood, and existentialism

i want fluffy hair again.

post-motherhood, i did what all hip and yummy mummies do, and cropped my hair a la katie holmes. a sassy straight swinging bob, so practical for mothering (bending your head over sleeping feeding child; getting a baby carrier onto your torso quickly).

i loved that stylish bob, and it instantly made me look more together and preened with little effort, compared to the stringy wild nest mess i was heaving around (given that a baby means no time to take a proper bath much less deep condition and comb your hair, and forget about regular trims to keep it in shape).

but now that my baby is grown, and is asserting his new found identity (my little child is a whole person, and will do it all by himself thanks very much) and revelling in the world of discoveries he is unearthing... now that I am no longer needed in the same way i was by a baby, with total and utter and complete dependence upon my care and nurturing and dutiful attendance;
well, so now i feel a little lost. i feel like i too, like him, need to discover who i now am and what i am now about.
these are big questions, and questions whose bigness frightened me when i was smaller (ie before i became a mother. motherhood expands you in every possible way - your heart, your courage, your strength.. the relentless and impossible tasks stretch you so much and make you reach out and touch the universe with your fingertips, that you find yourself surprised by the sheer mass of your being now).

when i became a mother, those questions were answered instantly.
Who am i? i am a mother, his goddess, his universe. What is the point of my being? to nurture, to give life, to love, to bring a person into glorious being. What shall i do with my days? all of the above, and find time to bathe.Is my heart empty? no, it is full with desperate tears and heart-rending joy.
This is what it means to be the mother of a baby.

but what does it mean to be the mother of a toddler? if having a baby breaks down all the previously familiar lines and fears within you, then mothering a toddler (with all its "no mummy, i want to do it myself") gives you a chance to join him in discovering identity and new abilities. your days are filled with "what do i want?" "how do i get over there?" "look what i can do!", and these are questions inherently full of hope and promise.

this is a very positive way to frame the thoughts i've been having of late. the same questions "what do i want?" "how do i get over there?" "what can i do?" can seem so bleak sometimes.. and sometimes i feel such loss at the passing of the baby-days, when i was a goddess.
but when who you once were is now passed, all you can do, after all, is think about who you can be next.

which is how i came to thoughts of my hair. that was the phase that preceded mothering, my girl phase. when i was a girl (because i was a sort of child before, maturity only turning up later), i had a fluffy wilful mane. it was full of spirit and its own ideas, i was always fighting it, but it brought me to exciting places.

i don't know why girlishness appeals right now. perhaps it's a reactionary attempt to redress the balance; having dealt with life forces and the universe, now a frivolous frothy approach is appealing, just for the difference?

my heart just wants.

my marriage post-baby

my marriage.. is a bit of a wreck, right now.

not that it hasn't been kinda our theme, from the beginning.. but anyway, the fallout post-baby has been pretty full on.
just all the usual stuff, you know; there's way too much work to do, between the million housework things, the constant breastfeeding, the fussing baby, the frequent vomiting, endless nights of broken and shortened sleep.
lots of tears and recriminations and resentments, lots of "you don't do enough" coupled with "i'm already doing all i can" going both ways. both partners feeling unappreciated and overworked, a terrible combination.

i remember particularly one long afternoon, when i was tearing my hair out with the baby and feeling like i just couldn't take it another minute more (unusual for a new mother, no?), and calling andrew in tears to beg him to come home already. and when i got him on the phone, hearing the background noise.. he was at a shopping centre! at 4 in the afternoon, he had left work early. i screamed at him for not coming home instead and saving me, for having the freedom to go to the shops when i was completely unable to and felt so trapped.
he came home right away, but it turned out that he had gone with the intention of buying me something nice for a treat, because i'd been going through so much.
it still makes me die inside.

anyway there's an endless list of moments like this. until finally, now... we've sorted out the division of all the roles, parenting and household included. we get along well, no more fights or snipes or bitter resentments. but.. it's so cold and empty. we have no relationship apart from co-parenting/cohabitation.
we have no relationship, it seems. we talk about our day and parenting and the related inner goings on, but we never talk about us. there's such a distance, a chasm. i can't even imagine starting to talk about our relationship, it would almost feel so weird and uncomfortable, because of the gap of politeness that now sits between us.

anyway this is by means of a long intro to a funny moment we had earlier.
we were hugging cos he was headed out the door with dandan for a long give-mummy-a-break walk. dandan spots us, and yells in protest, eyes wide and alarmed, and slowly backs away toward the door, all the while staring and protesting.
what's going on inside his little head?
is it because he doesn't see us hug all that much? is it because he's left out, and is normally the focus and centre of all hugging activity? is it because he's worried that if we keep hugging, a person will appear who threatens his very survival and way of life? (he's right on the last count though, ie siblings)

what's kinda funny, kinda sad, and kinda i-feel-bad-even-saying-it, is that.. well, dandan is the love of my life. i love him with a consuming intensity and such a great joy..
it's the kind of love and feeling i'd been looking for my whole life and always yearned to find. and that i always wish i had in my marriage. but there you go.
sometimes i wonder if andrew looks at his wife and child, and sees us locked in this mutual obsessive love, and feels sad.

motherhood zen

today i got baby poo off the bedroom carpet. not just a smidge, but an entire "plop!" (that's what i said right after to try to make him feel good about pooing), plus a few blobby drips as he toddled toward the exit to get away from it.

how? hydrogen peroxide.
i have a litre bottle from when i used to colour my hair pale blonde, orange, blue, purple, red, pink, (oh, 3, 4 years ago).

now i turn to it to get baby poo off the carpet. what a full-circle moment.

the handy-hints sites say to remove solids, apply peroxide, then blot, then voila!
me? i removed solids, blotted with a fistful of toilet paper, applied peroxide, scrubbed it in with gloved fingers, blotted off with toilet paper. then repeated the last 3 steps (apply, scrub, blot) about 100 times until the whole (new) toilet roll was gone, making a mountain of baby meringues in his potty.
i had to flush the toilet 3 times to get rid of all of it.

then i went back with a sponge and a bucket of water. apply sponge, rinse in bucket and squeeze; repeat 10 times.
i THINK it's clean now..

how it happened in the first place was that he gave me that Look (internal, far away, vague stare) and muttered "Poo.Poo.", which is a month-old achievement and signals the start of our sort-of-toilet-training days. so i whisked off his nappy, wiped away the little turtle-head of hard poo which he had squeezed out, and showed it to him while singing "poo-poo-yay", thinking that was the end of it (in hindsight, very naive and foolish of me). then i started to look around for more tissue, and think about whether i should dash out to get his potty to show that to him too, when i heard the Plop. then little distressed sounds as he toddled toward the exit, as i've said.

anyway, the thing that made me think (and name this blog accordingly) was that i realised i've reached a whole new level of motherhood zen.
the whole time this was going on, even from the moment of "Plop!", where previously - i would have normally imploded in a 5-alarm harried stress madness, this time, all i had going on was - a (slow) turning of cogs in my mind (eg "okay. there's poo on the carpet. what to do now..")..

good changes..

right now (from a letter to a friend)

Life has been pretty full on, with work 1-2 a week with early starts and full days in the city; but mostly cos of how full on dan is. I’m just starting to get a handle on toddler parenting.. and finally am beginning to really enjoy it.

For some reason, I guess because dan and I are both so emotionally intense, and because I never properly learnt how to deal with my strong emotions (ie have lots of internal and sometimes external tantrums/melt downs), he and I just really keep setting each other off.
Every time he started to get upset about something (ie every few minutes), I would just collapse inside right away. And even though I tried to hide it, I’m sure he sensed it and got more upset (cos Andrew could always tell, in his words I would "bristle" silently).

Anyway I finally worked out that I was taking his upsets too personally (ie was saying to myself "noo!! why are you doing this to me!"), and also fearing that strong emotions would harm/damage him.
Instead of just realising that this is something he's going through, and needs my help learning how to deal with, and is growing emotionally stronger and wiser through this.

So I think we're finally there! It’s been a million times easier now that I’ve finally got this part. Being emotionally drained is so.. emotionally draining.
And it was really draining our marriage too. I still don't know how we can find our way back to having a decent/good relationship... but at least it's not a warzone at home anymore.

what you're saying about feeling lost and searching etc; I’ve been feeling these things too!
I think as our babies are "all growned up" now, and we're starting to pass that intense trench-parenting phase, we're starting to look around and wonder what we /our life is supposed to be about now.
These last few months I’ve been seeking too.... From thinking all the time about what sort of church I want/need, to finding women whose approaches to life and parenting I find inspiring and encouraging and can relate with.

I totally agree with what you said, about motherhood having changed us forever, and we can't just resume and pick up where we left off pre-baby. But we're so much more now than we used to be, think of how much we've gone through and how much our hearts have expanded (and focused).

what you were saying about worrying about not doing the right thing by her; this seems to be SUCH a theme in motherhood. I’m so the same way too. I’m trying to learn this: to trust yourself more, and find people who encourage you in this; to look at your child for feedback - are they happy, inquisitive, learning, growing, loved; and to remind yourself that you're a wonderful mother (yes, you are!).

written to a childless friend bitching about children in bear suits

have i told you it's bloody hard being a parent? the thing that makes it worthwhile (cos god knows it's not the money or the glamour) is the cuteness of the child (when little anyway; although i have seen your mother looking at you in a certain misty-eyed way).

for me anyway, this is how it goes: he starts up, i'd go to throw him or myself out a window, but then i catch sight of him with his little bear ears, and go
"na-awwwwwww...
okay maybe i'll keep you around."
and so it goes.

see? it's a survival/coping strategy. so don't knock it. everytime you see a child in an animal suit, just look in his mum's eyes to catch the remains of the battle between lingering madness and inner strength.

NB: previously posted elsewhere