What do you DO all day?

I along with a lot of stay at home mums were very insulted to read a letter written to an advice columnist with the Washington Post, basically saying that she didn't believe that stay at home mum's actually did anything with their days that earned them the right at the end of their day to complain about being so tired. (For anyone who wants to read the letter, and the columnist's reply, the letter can be found here) Luckily the advice columnist is or has been in the past a stay at home mum, so her response is both witty and incredibly accurate. I found myself nodding vigorously at everything she had to say, and it took a great amount of strength to not stand up and cheer when I finished reading her response. (I have a sleeping baby and a sleeping mother who probably wouldn't have appreciated my enthusiasm as much as I do).

This isn't the first time I have heard this old chestnut, and not even the first time I have heard it since becoming a mum, but it makes my blood boil nonetheless. Even before I had Miss K, I knew from years of watching my mum be a stay at home mum to 6 children, that the stay at home mum that had nothing to do, was not a stay at home mum. When I was a kid, when I would have sick days, I'd sit in the lounge room and watch telly, and be vaguely aware of mum buzzing around in the background doing whatever it is that mums do. Even when she did stop at lunch to watch her soaps, she did it with a mountain of laundry and an ironing board in front of her. Even now, mum has a hard time sitting still for too long, having learned years ago that as a mum, your job is never finished, even when all but 2 of your children have moved out of home, and one of them is a mum themselves. Even sore hands aren't enough to stop her trying to do the dishes or clean the house up.

While I won't bore you with a list of everything that Miss K and I do on a day to day basis, needless to say, I don't have a lot of time to stop and smell the roses while she's out of bed. I'm still trying to figure out how to successfully do housework while she's awake. Tying her up has been ruled out as slightly over the top, and she so far has been unresponsive to suggestions of helping me to tidy up her toys, but we press on regardless. Sometimes it's hard to know whether I am getting the balance of attention to my daughter and attention to the house right, but I take the huge smiles I get from her as an indication that everything is OK. Even if there is a pile of books and Mega Blocks in the corner still not tidied up from yesterday, and I can never seem to get on top of keeping her room clean.

It isn't fair to assume that just because a woman doesn't go to an office and work from 9am to 5pm to pull a wage, and instead chooses to raise her children with her own hands, that she spends her entire day sitting around drinking coffee and socialising. If she does have a coffee, it is more likely to be sitting on a table going cold as she chases a child around, making sure they don't pull things on top of themselves, or eat things off the floor.

As for me, I hear Miss K singing my song, so back I go to being a stay at home mum. Someone pass me my cup of cold coffee......

60 things in 30 minutes

So I had a very exhausting and draining morning this morning and am completely lacking any kind of inspiration for a new post this afternoon, so I have decided to try something I have seen done by other bloggers, which looks like a good way to write a blog when I have total brain freeze. I am about to attempt to write 60 things about myself in the tiny amount of time of 30 minutes. I'm just glad I have fast typing fingers. So the time is now 4:15 pm, let's see how I go

1. I am 27 years old (nice easy one to begin with)
2. I have 5 brothers and sisters and 5 half brothers and sisters
3. I have one half sister that I have never met
4. I am a Gemini
5. My best friend is my big sister
6. I have never had an argument with my mother
7. I love to scrapbook and make greeting cards
8. I had epilepsy as a child, but I grew out of it as a teenager
9. I was part of a medical study through the Royal Children's Hospital as a child so they could learn more about the type of Epilepsy I had. 
10. I like to think that I helped create a greater understanding of this disease (is that too vain?)
11. I love to knit and crochet
12. I suffer from depression, which means I have to be careful not to let life get too stressful
13. I have a beautiful daughter, who is the centre of my whole world
14. I have a filthy sense of humour which always gets me into trouble with my parents (shouldn't that stop once you're in your twenties?)
15. I used to want to be an actress, a nurse or a writer. I have become none of these things
16. 18 months is the longest I've ever managed to stay in a job before I get bored and quit
17. I am related on my mother's side to the Napoleon's personal physician at St Helena 
18. I love to read
19. My nickname in high school was floor girl because I was always the last person on the school bus and quite often had to ride on the floor (my brother in law is the only one who still calls me this)
20. I learned how to kiss when I was 6 years old 
21. I have a lazy eye
22. I have never done drugs of any kind (as long as you don't count cigarettes, alcohol or caffeine)
23. I hate maths
24. Despite this hate of maths I want to become a bookkeeper
25. The most daring thing I have ever done is abseiled down a 20 metre cliff face in pitch darkness at 9 o'clock at night (don't worry, I was with a professional)
26. I have an incurable sweet tooth (my thighs hate me for this)
27. I have only ever been on a diet once and it lasted 4 days
28. I used to do ballroom dancing in my early twenties and came second twice in competitions
29. I have broken two bones in my body during my life. One wrist bone, and a green stick fracture in my foot
30. I broke my foot falling over an invisible crack in the pavement
31. As you can probably guess, I'm incredibly clumsy
32. I love to read, and can sometimes read an entire novel in a night (it just means I don't sleep)
33. I have a paralysing fear of fire and drowning
34. I also hate spiders
35. I love making people laugh (a gift my daughter seems to have inherited from me)
36. I hate early mornings
37. I collect music boxes
38. I was born in Horsham in Northern Victoria and spent the first four years of my life living in farm houses (but we didn't run any farms)
39. I hate seeing people cry and have to fight the urge to cry myself whenever I see it
40. I swear like a fisherman
41. I was raised as a Christadelphian
42. Thanks to my strict religious upbringing, I believe in God, but not in organised religion
43. I love to sing and used to sing with the school choir in high school
44. I can't handle large crowds, and hate going to the city because of this
45. I used to present a radio program on a tiny community radio station during school holidays
46. I am allergic to animal fur (which means Miss K cannot have a pet when she grows older unless it's a rock)
47. I am incredibly proud of my Irish ancestry, and got a tattoo of a drunk leprechaun on my arm to celebrate this
48. I have 3 other tattoos besides my leprechaun
49. I can play the piano and the guitar (neither with any great skill)
50. I have terrible eyesight which requires glasses but I never wear them
51. None of my grandparents are alive
52. I used to be terrified of the internet when it first became available (I used to think if I pushed a wrong button, I would blow up china)
53. I used to think that Mr Sheen (the furniture polish logo, not the actor) would come out of my speakers and attack me when I listened to the song Ugly Duckling from the Hans Christian Anderson movie (I was 3 at the time, give me a break)
54. I would rather sleep in for ten more minutes than walk out the door with a face full of make up and my hair done pretty
55. Despite this lack of interest in personal grooming, I used to want to be a beauty therapist
56. I am a huge slob
57. I love photography, but lack the patience to be any good at it
58. I have dropped 2 dress sizes since giving birth to Miss K, but none of this was pregnancy weight
59. I gave birth to Miss K without the assistance of any medications (a fact of which I'm quite proud because it wasn't easy and was quite painful in fact)
60. I am watching a children's program as I type this despite the fact that I am currently alone, as Miss K is more interested in yelling in the hallway

There you go 4:45pm and I have completed 60 things about me, despite having to get up every 5 minutes to rescue something else from Miss K's grasp. So now you know 60 completely useless facts about me, my day is complete. Now to go and actually do some work.

In the blink of an eye

Ok so I know I've been really slack lately and my last post was almost a month ago, but time flies when you're planning a birthday party. That's right, Miss K has finally hit the 1 year mark as of Saturday. I have no idea how this past year has gone so quickly, but the closer we got to the big day, the faster the days seemed to sped by. Now she has been 1 for a whole two days, and time doesn't seem to be slowing down at all.

We had a special Elmo themed party for Miss K on Saturday, and managed to squeeze 15 of my friends and family into my lounge room for the occasion. The party went really well and Miss K had a wonderful time. I relaxed my food rules for the day so that she could enjoy the party food, and enjoy it she did. She got to eat fairy bread and sausage rolls and chocolate and lemonade, all of which she rarely sees, if at all. She got lots of presents and attention and she relished her moment in the spotlight. She even managed to last for the entire party without needing a nap, obviously not wanting to miss a moment of the action. It was a wonderful day, and worth the weeks of preparation it needed to go off without a hitch. She especially loved her cake, which had Elmo sitting on top of it holding a number 1.

The cake making was an adventure in itself, and further proof, if ever any was needed that I should not be allowed into a kitchen except to make coffee. The cake took 2 days to make, with thanks to my wonderful big sister, who helped me to build and decorate it, and my wonderful little sister who watched the children so that we could focus entirely on the cake for a day. The end result looked fantastic, and there will be photos uploaded as soon as I get them off my big sister who took all the photos which I forgot to do. The kitchen looked like a scene from a B grade horror movie at one stage after a whole bottle of red food dye got spilt, and I managed to throw an entire ball of coloured icing into a sink of dirty dishwater while kneading it (only I would be so clumsy) but the hours of uncertainty and stress paid off at the end of the day as you will soon see.

So my baby girl is now a big 1 year old, and she seems to be growing and changing so quickly. It seems every time I turn around she has learned something new. A lot of the things that have stressed me out over the past 12 months now seem to be insignificant and totally unworthy of having spent so much time worrying over, but I guess that is the job of a new mum, and all I can say is thank heavens it's all behind me.

Now it's time for my play date with Miss K, so I'm off to stop her biting on the balloons left over from the party.

Not happy Jan

So how do you write a blog when you have no internet?? The answer is you can't. Ah yes the joys of wireless internet, you can't get unlimited plans.

Things here have been pretty quiet the last few days, Miss K is getting over yet another cold, so I have been swamped in mucous and paracetamol since Wednesday. Ady came over for another visit today, but as the weather was so terrible, all we could do is sit in the lounge room and stare at the walls. Things got a bit better after he left, I went over to a friend's place for a drink and to unwind.

Right now, all I feel is tired. Tired of having to make all the decisions, tired of being the bad guy, tired of being an adult. That's the crappy thing about childhood. Kids are too young to appreciate it, and adults are too old to get away with it any more. The only thing that gets me through these kinds of days is Miss K. She is the force behind every move that I make, and every decision starts with the words how will this affect her. It is for her that I have put off studying for another year, and don't look for work, so that I can guarantee that she is being taken care of the way I feel she should be. It is for her that I don't go to the cinema any more, I don't go to pubs, I don't go to many parties unless I can take her with me, and then I go home early. I feel guilty asking people to babysit her for me, not because she is a difficult child to deal with, but because it isn't their job to care for her, even for an hour. She is my responsibility and I feel that responsibility every day with every breath that I take.

All I can do now is go to bed and hope that tomorrow is a better day. Lets face it, things can't really get much worse.

She slimed me!!!

So for today's play date, Miss K and I decided to get a little dirty (well I decided and Miss K was forced to go along with it). I mentioned a few posts ago that Miss K hates getting her hands dirty, which is why we're having so many problems with getting her to eat finger foods. So I decided to tackle this problem today by making some slime for her to play with. We started by trying to make monster blood, but after an entire pack of corn flour, all we had was white water so I had to scrap that idea, and made play dough instead.

For anyone who doesn't know how to make your own child safe play dough at home, the recipe is as follows:

1 cup of water
1 cup of salt
2 cups of plain flour
1 table spoon of oil
food dye to colour.

Add all the ingredients together and knead until it forms a dough. To make mixing the colour easier, I put the food dye in the water. And there you have it, a child friendly dough. (I still wouldn't recommend eating it, as the salt makes it super salty, just ask Miss K)

Yup, she stuck it straight in her mouth. After half a bottle of juice to get the salt and flour out of her mouth, we set out to let her know that it can be OK to get your hands dirty. She was pretty resistant at first, and although she was happy to touch the dough, she would try to get any of it that stuck to her hands off as soon as she let go.

But once she saw that I was OK with having the goo all over my hands, she started to get into it and was really enjoying herself by the end....

...Let me try that again. She was really enjoying herself by the end...

OK so I guess we put the camera away before she started having fun, but trust me, she really did like it. She even decided to try playing with her noodles at dinner time, and they were much slimier.

So even though the battle is not completely won, we're one step closer to Miss K being OK with having dirty hands, and hopefully that will make life all round a little bit easier.

Taking a time out

So today I was a little bit naughty. And by this I don't mean I had four pieces of chocolate instead of two. I mean that instead of vacuuming the floor and doing the dishes this afternoon I had a play date with Miss K.

Normally when mum heads off to work after school, I stick Miss K in the middle of the lounge room with a huge pile of toys and run around cleaning up so the place is nice for mum when she gets home in the evening. This usually involves a lot of running to and from the lounge room to make sure Miss K isn't getting into anything while my back is turned, and I spend a lot of time tearing my hair out, and Miss K spends a lot of time whinging at me because she wants someone to play with and I'm not giving her the attention that she wants. But today, I decided to do things differently and see how less stressful my afternoon was. First I hid everything that Miss K is not allowed to touch, so that I wouldn't have to say no to her at all, then I just sat in the middle of the floor and watched.

I'm actually ashamed to admit that this isn't how every afternoon is spent for us, and I am going to take steps to remedy this immediately because today was the most relaxed that both Miss K and I have been for a long time. Instead of panicking that there was too much to do and not enough time to do it in, I crawled around the floor and had fun and laughed. I also had a lot of time to look at my little girl in disbelief, because there are still days when I cannot believe how lucky I am that this beautiful child is my daughter. In the past 11 months she has grown and developed in so many ways it is mind blowing. She takes joy in the simplest things like a stuffed teddy or an old computer mouse, and everything is so new and amazing to her. Today we danced together to her little keyboard, and sang songs and wrestled. There were no tears, there was no saying no to her and there was no frustration that I couldn't juggle housework and parenting.

Amazingly, the house didn't fall down around my ears because there was a pile of dishes in the sink, and even dinner wasn't the usual wrestling match it is every other night because we were both in a great mood. I even managed to get the lounge room cleaned up and have a coffee made for mum when she got home. So in the afternoons from now on, the rest of the world is going to have to bugger off because it has officially become mummy and Miss K time. This does mean that anyone who reads my blog is probably going to have to wait a few hours extra each day to read my posts because the computer is not even going to be looked at while there is playing to be done.

Well I need to go to bed because tomorrow is mother's group and my little sister is visiting us, so I need to get my beauty hibernation. See you after my next play date!

Apples and oranges

If there is one thing that frustrates me more than anything else, it's people who compare their babies with other peoples babies. (That and trying to scrape mashed banana out of the carpet.) I saw it heaps before I had Miss K, but it seems to be magnified by the fact that when I see it these days, it's usually my daughter that the children are being compared against.

I say this to my family and friends all the time, but it still stands true. No two babies are exactly the same. A perfect example is Miss K with her teething. While both her father and I were cutting teeth at 6 months as is expected, she waited until she was 9 months old to cut her first tooth, and is averaging one tooth per month. This is slower than what is considered normal, but doesn't make her abnormal. I have been reassured time and again that it can be normal for a baby to not start cutting teeth until 10 months. There are a few areas in which Miss K does not fit into the normal category. Her speech is not where it is for most other babies, but she is able to jump, which is something I've not seen in other babies her age before. I'm not trying to say that my daughter is better than other babies because she is jumping when others can't, but that seems to be the impression that I get from every person who tries to compare their baby with mine.

It is hard to tell if Miss K would still be where she is now if she wasn't so sick when she was born and for the first 5 weeks of her life. No one is able to tell me for certain what kind of damage could have been done. We go for tests every couple of months, and she has been given a clean bill of health so far. Most recently we had her hearing and her eye sight tested, and both of them are perfectly normal. She is slightly short sighted, but that is normal in children of her age. She has also inherited her mother's lazy eye, but she seems to be correcting that one on herself. I have a sinking feeling that we'll discover in several years that Miss K has some kind of impairment that wouldn't show up this early, partly because of the difficulties that her father has with reading and comprehension. The thing is because Ady's mother refuses to accept that these difficulties indicate that something was wrong with Ady, she never had anything done about it. It also means we don't know what is wrong with Ady so I don't know what to prepare myself for. Of course this doesn't change the way I feel about Miss K, if anything it just strengthens my determination to protect her and make sure she has a good life.

I love my daughter no matter how slow she is growing her teeth, or how often she insists on jumping on my lap, and that is really the only thing that matters to me and her. I know that she will start talking when she is ready, just like she has done everything else. It is nice to have reassurance that Miss K is healthy, and in a lot of ways she is very normal, but apart from making sure everything is OK, I really don't need to know how other babies have done what Miss K is doing. The only thing that matters to me is how my baby is doing.

But for now any time anyone tells me that their child is doing things faster than Miss K I will just smile politely, grit my teeth and repeat my mantra. No two children are the same.