All posts filed under: Long Stuff

Babies: The Great Unifier

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(Published in the December ’15/January ’16 edition of Little Treasures Magazine. This is an extended version of the published article) When I was pregnant, a colleague told me in sage tones that having a baby was the most competitive activity she’d ever gotten herself into. The alarming tales she told of coffee group bake-offs and veiled queries about whose baby was first to smile/roll over/talk/play the violin certainly took my mind off my swollen ankles. Fortunately, the two local mother groups I fell into (via antenatal classes and a Plunket PEPE course) were more of the “grab a packet of biscuits on the way and let’s have a laugh about how many times this week we’ve opened the front door to visitors with our maternity bras undone” variety. Nevertheless, via an increased consumption of social media, my eyes were opened to the battleground that is motherhood. Natural birth vs. c-section. Breast feeding vs. formula. Co-sleeping vs. own bed. Vaccinators vs. anti vaxers. Cry it out vs. rock to sleep. The “vs.” list was seemingly endless, and …

Four Year Old World

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Most evenings see me in a pair of yoga pants I bought when I was pregnant because I’ve got this thing about not wanting to “waste” nice clothes on hanging out at home (I blame my half-Scottish heritage for this mindset). Don’t go imagining a stylish “lounging at home in my activewear” getup though; these pants were from the $5 rack at Kmart, and are so old their cost-per-wear sits at about 0.0004 cents. Due to their clingy nature, they made my pregnant ass look like two baskets of rutting hamsters, but goddamit I love a bargain so wore them anyway. Also, nothing else fit. I was wearing these pants as I tucked Amy into bed last night, so was taken aback when she said, “Are you going out for dinner after I’ve gone to sleep? Those pants look fab-lee-iss”. Ah, but Amy is four, and in Four Year Old World a $5 pair of yoga pants can be considered totally ok to wear to a restaurant (stick that in your lemon, Lulu). It got …

The Swan Plant Fracas

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After working the girls up into a frenzy about getting a swan plant so we could watch caterpillars turn into butterflies (wholesome! outdoors! gardening! learning but it’s FUN! etc), all our local garden centers were totally out of the bloody things. So we schlepped across town to a High Class garden centre and selected a healthy specimen with two teeny tiny caterpillars already munching on it. Amy promptly named them Elsa & Anna. Success…until two angry wasps wanted to come with our plant, and caused us to nearly knock over an over-priced yucca in our haste to get away. Plant temporarily abandoned, we sought out a garden centre employee so I could say “hey look, buddy, I don’t know how you guys do things over here in the land of Range Rovers, but in the Central-West suburbs we like our plants without flying striped stinging assholes”. The nice employee man explained to my wide-eyed children that the wasps were chasing us because they want to eat the caterpillars.‪#‎RemueraHorrorStory‬. With Amy’s shrieks of “Go and save Elsa …

The most awesome solution

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You know that guy who was in your friend group when you were a teenager who was always so much smarter than everyone else? The one you always knew would go far? We had one of those. He was crazy smart,  as well as alarmingly good at sports and doing practical stuff. He would have been really annoying if he wasn’t so damn nice with it. This weekend I was panicking about electrocution from fairy lights,  repeating “stop touching the Christmas tree. Stop touching the Christmas tree. Stop touching the Christmas tree” and googling “how bad is it if your kid eats tinsel”.  I paused to have a soothing social media fix, and saw that my friend had also experienced a similar toddler-related conundrum, but had Mathsed and Scienced his way though it. So while I’m still shrieking at my children and standing on ornaments that are strewn all over the carpet (because “stop touching the Christmas tree” is an open challenge to a two year old), my friend is probably sitting around with his super …

The Case For A Third

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(Originally published in the October/November 2015 edition of Little Treasures Magazine) I always imagined myself having two kids one day. Girls, boys, one of each…that never bothered me, but I really wanted two. For a while, it looked like we might struggle to even have one, and the day I saw two blue lines appearing on a white stick remains one of the happiest of my life. My husband was a somewhat reluctant father-to-be – he was massively supportive, but I’d catch him gazing at my rapidly growing belly with a mix of what can only be described as abject terror. That all changed the second Amy was born, at which point he became The Only Man To Have Ever Become A Father, our daughter was The Most Amazing Child In The World, Ever, and he practically signed up for a second baby on the spot. Given the struggles we had getting pregnant with Amy, we got back on the baby bandwagon (almost) immediately. Surgeries for endometriosis followed, as did failed attempts at IVF, and …

Those are some mighty assumptions you’re making there

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I like to imagine that instead of a complex computery algorithm, there is a bunch of industry suits sitting around a table with imported snacks, craft beer and wine that was chosen for its bouquet rather than its marked down price, deciding what “sponsored” posts should show in my Facebook newsfeed.  Because this week I’ve seen all these ones, and I’m pretty sure the decision making process went down like this: Man Suit 1: “Sooo…next up there’s this mother of two from New Zealand. She’s on Facebook a lot, and her main interests seem to be swearing and watching TV.” Man Suit 2: “Quantitative feedback and my personal understanding of women is that mothers really like doing laundry. Not only that, but they LOVE hearing laundry stories from other mothers! Persil washing powder is one of our new clients and we really need eyeballs on their ad because they overspent on the talent for the shoot and their staff Christmas party, so let’s flog that shit to her. She’ll lap it up. OO! She’ll probably share it with her …

My eeeeeeeeyyyyyyessssssss

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Doctor’s simple instructions for Tilly’s eye drops: Lie toddler down quietly Use clean fingers to hold eyelid open Gently squeeze two drops into each eye Have toddler lie still for a few minutes to make sure the eyedrops have dispersed. How it went down: Lay toddler on couch Used clean fingers to try and hold eyelid open Chased freaked-out toddler around house while she shouted “no mummy! no mummy!” loudly enough to alarm the neighbors. Tried to reason with toddler, remembered that toddlers don’t reason, so offered bribes. No show. Tackled then wrestled toddler to floor. Took a moment to acknowledge that I’d be totally awesome in some sort of greased piglet wrestling competition. Sang toddler’s favorite songs at high volume to calm her down while trying to pry her eyes open. Worried that she’d come over like one of Pavlov’s Dogs and associate her favorite songs with pain and fear. Started singing first non-child song that came into my head. It was Rage Against The Machine’s “Killing In The Name Of”. Flagged non-child song as …

Mummy Rage

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Hearing the neighbours drag their bins down the driveway at 10pm before we had kids: “Oh! I forgot that it was bin night. Never mind, we’ll put the bins out tomorrow morning after enjoying a full night’s sleep, the breakfast news, and a hot coffee. Actually – our bin probably isn’t even full”. Hearing the neighbours drag their bins down the driveway at 10pm now: “Those inconsiderate fuckcakes! They’re dragging their bins right under the kids’ windows! Why didn’t they take their bins out when they saw me on the road trying to force the lid closed on our overflowing bin well before 7pm? If they wake the children with their bin dragging, I will cut them! I WILL CUT THEM SO DEEP THEY’LL NEVER STOP BLEEDING”

In your face, fairies.

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About a week ago, Amy started wistfully staring off into space and wondering, “Mummy, are fairies real do you think? If they are, they’ll probably leave me some chocolate”. So began a somewhat long and involved process of Amy leaving out nightly letters (dictated to me), pictures, piles of glitter, bits of jewelry etc., for the fairies to find. To start with, I was pretty sure she was just hopping on the fairy gravy train in the hope I’d try to convince her they were real by leaving her treats. Now, before anyone accuses me of bah-humbuggedness, this is the girl who got up on Christmas morning when I was happily squawking about Santa having come overnight, and said “oh, Mummy, Santa isn’t ACTUALLY real, you didn’t really believe that, did you?” as she rolled her 3.5 year old eyes at me. This is what I’m dealing with.  She might as well drink unicorn blood for breakfast. But after a week of fairy pen-pal action, she seemed to actually be quite into it, and genuinely bummed on the …