Being a Mum

I'll never be this eloquent, but I wish I was. One of my girlfriends sent me this story in an email today, it's lovely, just wanted to share it...

We are sitting at lunch one day when my daughter casually mentions that she and her husband are thinking of "starting a family." We're taking a survey," she says half-joking. "Do you think I should have a baby?"

"It will change your life," I say, carefully keeping my tone neutral.
"I know," she says, "no more sleeping in on weekends, no more "spontaneous vacations."

But that is not what I meant at all.

I look at my daughter, trying to decide what to tell her. I want her to know what she will never learn in childbirth classes. I want to tell her that the physical wounds of child bearing will heal, but becoming a mother will leave her with an emotional wound so raw that she will forever be vulnerable. I consider warning her that she will never again read a newspaper without asking, "What if that had been MY child?" That every plane crash, every house fire will haunt her! That when she sees pictures of starving children, she will wonder if anything could be worse than watching your child die.

I look at her carefully manicured nails and stylish suit and think that no matter how sophisticated she is, becoming a mother will reduce her to the primitive level of a bear protecting her cub.

That an urgent call of "Mum!", will cause her to drop a soufflé or her best crystal without a moment's hesitation. I feel that I should warn her that no matter how many years she has invested in her career, she would be professionally derailed by motherhood. She might arrange for childcare, but one day she will be going into an important business meeting and she will think of her baby's sweet smell. She will have to use every ounce of discipline to keep from running home, just to make sure her baby is all right.

I want my daughter to know that every day decisions will no longer be routine. That a five year old boy's desire to go to the men's room rather than the women's at McDonald's will become a major dilemma. That right there, in the midst of clattering trays and screaming children, issues of independence and gender identity will be weighed against the prospect that a child molester may be lurking in that restroom. However decisive she may be at the office, she will second-guess herself constantly as a mother.

Looking at my attractive daughter, I want to assure her that eventually she will shed the pounds of pregnancy, but she will never feel the same about herself. That her life, now so important, will be of less value to her once she has a child. That she would give herself up in a moment to save her offspring, but will also begin to hope for more years, not to accomplish her own dreams, but to watch her child accomplish theirs.

I want her to know that a caesarean scar or shiny stretch marks will become badges of honour.

My daughter's relationship with her husband will change, but not in the way she thinks. I wish she could understand how much more you can love a man who is careful to powder the baby or who never hesitates to play with his child. I think she should know that she would fall in love with him again for reasons she would now find very unromantic. I wish my daughter could sense the bond she will feel with women throughout history who have tried to stop war, prejudice and drunk driving.

I want to describe to my daughter the exhilaration of seeing your child learn to ride a bike. I want to capture for her the belly laugh of a baby who is touching the soft fur of a dog or cat for the first time. I want her to taste the joy that is so real it actually hurts.

My daughter's quizzical look makes me realize that tears have formed in my eyes. "You'll never regret it," I finally say. Then I reached across the table, squeezed my daughter's hand and offered a silent prayer for her, and for me, and for all the mere mortal women who stumble they're way into this most wonderful of callings.

May you always have in your arms, the one who is in your heart.

Finally...

We have another tooth! Woo hoo! This brings Mollys grand total too... wait for it... FIVE! not bad for 16 months growing eh!?! Bless her little heart, she'd been a bit whiny in the week, didn't enjoy her swim at all on Tuesday, (which is not like Molly) and I guess this explains it. I actually noticed it on Friday but didn't want to say anything for fear of frightening it away again, ha ha! As you can see, by Saturday she was feeling fairly confident in her new tooths chomping ability, we told her that maybe pine cones were not the best things to chew on, but what can you do...

I was hoping we would get a whole bunch all at once, just to get the teething over with, but it looks like we're going to get them one at a time. I'm not going to say I can see more coming (because I've been saying that for months and nothing happened), and since her lack of teeth certainly doesn't seem to be slowing her down at all - she's eating like a horse and growing like a weed, two horrible analogies for our beautiful girl - I am more then happy to not have a grizzler on my hands again.

Molly's new words this week include more, fish, a-choo (not really a word but you know what I mean) and mouse. I'm not sure if anyone other then hubby and I would understand, but that's OK. One of my friends is absolutely convinced that Molly says Hello Paula when she sees her, saying that I think Molly was only 6 or 7 months when another friend (sorely missed!) was equally convinced that she'd said Hiya Jody... but as we've always said she's very advanced you know, ha ha ha!

Her climbing ability continues to know no bounds, she can get herself into her high chair in about 5 seconds. She has started to move her little chair around the house to reach things too, this week she pushed it into the kitchen so she could have a look in the fridge, she didn't want anything, just to have a look, or maybe nothing took her fancy? I swear, I can't take my eyes off her for a second, and we don't have enough high shelves! The top of our wardrobe is looking like the safest place in the house right now - it works for the cat anyway!

Wild about wildlife!

We made the most of a glorious weekend and went to Orana Park on Saturday - thank goodness we did, last night I was rehashing my plans for the ark we're gonna build if this rain keeps up, seriously I thought the roof was coming off, either that or we'd be flooded out from the amount of rain coming down both the chimneys... scary! Add to that the most tremendous thunder storm and we were laughing, not!

Anyway, current weather aside, we had the best time. I'm not really a big fan of zoos, caging animals for our viewing pleasure is generally something that leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. But this one is a bit different, the animals have lots and lots of room, and seem relatively content (well, apart from the lions, but then I'm not sure I would now what a contented lion looked like really. Hmmm, full and bloody I would think?!).

Most importantly Molly loved it, this (photo) was the look she kept up for most of the day. I've never seen anyone get so excited about giraffes before, very cute. We should have visited here before, she does seem to love looking at animals, she goes berserk at Willowbank - which is great until we get to the kiwi house. 'Molly shhhh' is something that she selectively understands, and in a dark and spooky forest she gets more then a bit exciteable as you can imagine!

That said, she gets fairly worked up about animals and bugs on the TV too. Just recently there has been an advert that features kids playing with a snail (gross!), she thinks it's just hilarious. Let's hope this enthusiasm extends to the inevitable plague of ants that will visit our kitchen in just a few short weeks - I have bait traps ready to fill (evil, insect killing mummy!).

A good time was had by all, lets hope that's not the end of our good weather for the year.

All I want for Christmas

Is everything! Oh god, everywhere I look there is something I HAVE to buy for Moomy for Christmas. Now hubby and I solemnly promised each other before we even got pregnant that we would not, repeat not, spoil our child. We understand there are far more important things to give her then 'things'. Love, time, cuddles, attention, joy, you know all the good stuff, but she has all that already (hopefully)... so now I want to go wild with the $13 (last of the big spenders eh!) we have put aside for Christmas this year!

There is just so much cool stuff around, and now she's a wee bit older she needs different things from her toys (OK, maybe she doesn't need them, but it would be nice). So the list is ever increasing, and we still have three months to go yet!

So, aside from wanting to manically spend money on our daughter, I'm actually really proud of myself. This time last year I was whining that I couldn't get into the Christmas spirit, it was too hot and sunny to be thinking Christmas trees and twinkly lights, but this year it's all good. It's about 28 degrees here (in our living room, bit cooler outside 'cause the winds blowing quite hard), the sun is shining and I'm seriously thinking this weekend might be the one to get the paddling pool out. And yet I am still thinking about Christmas, I think I might have cracked it!

I think this is more to do with Molly then me, but if I'm this excited now what will I be like when it actually arrives - maybe I'll have gone past it by then? Or maybe I'm gonna be one of those mad women who wants to put the tree up in August and decorate the lawn with flashing reindeer and a couple of santas, oh hubby will love that! I've already had him 'baa humbugging', when I asked him to book a day off work to attend Molly's Christmas show for her music group, oh don't worry, he'll be there, if he knows what's good for him!!

PS the photo has nothing to do with anything, I just thought it was cute and today was the first day she's worn shorts, so summer must be here, woo hoo!

Hippy chicks

It's the start of term four and we're back to our full-on Molly schedule, activities practically every day - except Mondays and alternate Thursdays, book early to avoid disappontment, ha ha - and she loves it.

Today was our first day back at Playcentre and we did some tie-dying. It was great fun, I'll post a photo of Molly in her new 'hippy' t-shirt as soon as it's dry, it came out really well. You can imagine the mess we all got into. One of the other mums was completely freaking out, she thought that the dye would permanently (?) dye their little hands, she started to look a bit panicky as Molly thrust her arms up to her elbow into the bowl of green dye, I tried to make a joke about scouring her down with Ajax after every session... she just gave me a weird look, like 'ooh I don't think that's a good idea, no'... oh well, I'm anticipating a call from social services anyday now.

Anyway, I'm inspired, I've been searching the house for things we can tie-dye, and yes I know it's not exactly the 'in' look, but hey, you've all seen our house right? will it make too much difference? no, exactly. Watch out sofa throw, here I come, I have cold water dye and rubber bands and I'm not afraid to use them!

How times change

First off, let me apologise for the serious lack of blogging for the past week or so, we've been having a bit of a rough time. Hubby has been really sick, not 'man flu' sick, but really, scarily, emergency room at three in the morning sick... not good. But he's making a swift recovery now and so I thought I'd better catch up on all the news - although to be honest this has been kind of all-consuming for us all. Hubby because he felt so terrible, me because I was so worried about him (I've know the guy for 16 years and never seen him look so awful - yellow and grey at the same time?!), and Molly because she was so confused about the whole thing. It's hard to explain to a 16 month old that yes daddy is home all day, woo hoo! but no you can't climb all over him and he doesn't really feel like playing at the moment.

Anyway, last week we were visiting our friends in Rakaia, looking forward to lots of cuddles with the new baby, and Molly loves playing with her big sister Anna. This is a great drive for me, Molly always sleeps and the views of the mountains are awesome. Nice big road, lots of passing places. But what is it that makes some people dawdle along at 60kph until we get to a passing spot and then accelerate to 120kph? Bloody mindedness? I think so. This happened a couple of times, same man, and eventually I just thought, bugger it, I'll floor it until I get round him. I got round him, no drama (apart from, of course, his need to drive on my bumper for about 20km afterwards), and then I freaked out... How could I do 120kph with Moo in the car? How could I be so irresponsible? And then it hit me that 120kph is only about 75mph, which is the approximate speed of every car on the road in the UK. I used to drive around town at almost that speed every day, and now I'm freaking out about doing that speed on a straight road, with 40kms visibility on both directions... what happened to me? when did I turn into my Nana? Oh yeah, that's right, I'm a Mum.

Everything has the capacity to scare me now (although I'll admit I've always been a world class worrier) Some days I avoid the news just in case there has been an unseasonal storm which heralds the start of a global warming meltdown, or more death and destruction the middle east which must mean the end of the world is nigh. Depends how fragile I'm feeling you know. Everything needs to be considered in minute detail, pros and cons weighed and measured... otherwise minor (or major) freak outs occur as I marvel at my own foolhardiness (is that a word or did I just make it up?), and the state of the world, oh god, don't even get me started, where are those worry beads...