Pinch Me

Posted on February 22, 2011 5 Comments

Who is that? I barely recognise her. Every once in a while there’s just a giant leap forward and that was this week. It’s not just the vocabulary explosion or how much more she understands, although that’s part of it. Mostly, it’s just seeing her become her own person.

On the weekend I was madly crocheting the baby blanket in the hope that it will actually get done in time. The munchkin was playing with the wool and I asked her for one of the colours so I could keep going with what I was doing. Her response? Predictably was ‘No. I need it’ I’m not exactly sure what her masterplan was for the wool but repeated requests did not yield it to me. Nor did asking her what exactly the nature of her need was. I was set to let it go because I knew in about 10 minutes she would be on to some other thing that she ‘needed’ and I could reclaim the wool.

But, finally by way of explanation she pointed to the blanket and said ‘that’s my blanket?’ and I began to have an inkling. I let her know that no, it wasn’t her blanket it was for the baby but that I had made her a blanket when she was a baby and would she like it. To say that she was effusive when she had the blanket in her hot little hands would be an understatement.  {Photo above taken of her wielding her baby blanket in victory}

‘Oh thank you, mummy’

‘You’re welcome, baby’

‘I’m sorry, mummy’

‘What are you sorry for?’

‘I’m sorry I was grumpy, I didn’t mean it’

I don’t know why, but that more than anything else that has happened lately made how much she’s grown up so stark. The baby moves often now and it reminds me of how it wasn’t that long ago that she was wriggling around in there and now she stands there, holding a conversation. We actually grew a human – a bubbly, talkative, giggly, challenging, affectionate, bossy, demanding, independent, charming creature who I get to spend most of my time with. Why do I get the feeling that your children break your heart a little bit at a time the older they get? And something tells me it’s not just the pregnant hormones talking.

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Five Things You Won’t Think You’ll Miss

Posted on February 16, 2011 20 Comments

This is part of the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Challenge over on Aussie Mummy Bloggers. Today’s taks is to write a list post. The last time I did this challenge, this is what I came up with – 10 Things I Didn’t Read in What To Expect. And since then I’ve definitely gotten very list happy with – 7 Ways Parenthood Made Me a Hypocrite, 5 Battle Strategies for Winning the War on Perfectionism and 10 Things I Won’t Discipline.

Excuse me while I get highly sentimental for a moment. Blame the pregnancy hormones if you like, but we all know that deep down, pregnancy hormones or no pregnancy hormones I’m just a big sap.

1. Going to Sleep on Their Own

I remember lusting after this milestone with a one-pointed passion. When Riley was a baby I remember thinking that there where times when she may never sleep again, let alone go to sleep. And as a toddler, she’s better at it but it’s always a bit hit and miss. Sometimes she needs some extra help or just can’t seem to relax enough at the end of the day.

And the fact is, that last night when I put her into bed with a book to help her wind down and then heard her calling out about half an hour later I figured I was in for more of the same. But when I went in and she asked me to turn off the lamp and close the door behind me, well let’s say I had mixed emotions. I barely had time to see her roll over and her sleepy eyes close as I left the room. Of course, I’m proud of her growing up into being the little person that she is. But a big part of me still misses the baby who needed me a whole lot more.

2. Sleeping Through the Night

And even sleeping through. Yes, I was over the moon to leave my sleep-deprived, semi-comatose self behind when Riley started to reliably sleep through. Which wasn’t really reliable until she was about 2 or so. I know that’s a whole lot of semi-coma. But still, there’s a part of me that while enjoying getting solid, undisturbed sleep, still misses my nighttime snuggles.

3. Carrying Them Around Everywhere

Walking is somewhat overrated. When you are carrying around an increasingly heavy baby who will often develop an inexplicable aversion to a pram, it’s easy to dream of how much easier everything will be when they can walk. Except that toddlers walking highly resemble cats. They’re incapable of walking in a straight line, loiter at thresholds and in general have trouble committing to a chosen course of action. But besides all of that, I just miss carrying my baby around. Yes, it’s exciting to see her toddling about exploring everything for herself, but I’m secretly very pleased when she wants to be carried, even with all my extra pregnancy weight at the moment.

4. Speaking Properly

I’m a language geek so you’d think the whole speaking properly thing would be well up my alley, and it is. Mostly. I love hearing new words and new sentences (even the sentences that make no sense like ‘I can’t go to bed, it is too sparkly’). But certain words are just so lovely for being mispronounced. So I was quite devastated when chocolate went from cho-late to choc-late. When she loses her lisp I will probably cry.

5. Falling Asleep on You

I know. It’s another sleep one. I might be cuddle obsessed. And although at the time being pinned underneath a resting baby, unable to move for fear of waking them may seem inconvenient or downright annoying. I mean, what’s the point of them napping, if you can’t actually do something? And by do something I mean make it over to your chocolate stash in the kitchen.  But now that Riley naps less and often won’t nap at all, the whole falling asleep on my lap is increasingly rare. But the heavy head of a completely blissed out munchkin on my chest is definitely something I miss.

Unrelated Tagline Update from Yesterday

And the results of the tagline vote are in!

Imperfect Parenting. A Blog in Words and Pictures (22%)

Parenting Uncut. A Blog in Words and Pictures (13%)

Parenting tales from a reformed perfectionist (30%)

Parenting. Whimsy. TMI. Photos in Bulk. (35%)

And there was one brilliant suggestion that I use all of them and rotate them. So tempting!

Thank you so much for everyone’s comments and feedback – it was so fantastic to have such a big response.

But what I think will happen is that I will somehow moosh number 1 and number 4 together. I agree that number 4 doesn’t flow as well and while I understand the need to shorten ‘too much information’ to ‘tmi’ for conciseness, I have an aversion to not using full words. And although ‘parenting tales from a reformed perfectionist’ was highly popular I’m going to go all blog dictator on you and veto it because it just doesn’t sing to me.

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140/365 The Cup

Posted on February 10, 2011 Leave a Comment


Toddlers are often rigid creatures of habit. Everything always in the same order, done in the same way. And it can take a whole lot to change something. Which is probably why I lean to the change resistant as well as far as the toddler is concerned because I know how much work it entails.

Except, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes they take a leap forward in their growing up and something just changes. So last night mid bout of hyperactivity when it was bed time I was very surprised. She didn’t ask for a bottle – she asked for milk in a cup. She didn’t ask for the lamp on in her room. All she did was roll over snuggle up to the doona and went to sleep. Just like that.

I would be over the moon if I wasn’t so distracted by how grown up she is.

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137/365 Big Bed

Posted on February 1, 2011 2 Comments


It looks like we are all ready to move the munchkin into her big bed over the weekend (assuming I can finish painting the skirting boards. And yes I realise I’ve been meaning to do those skirting boards for ages. But it’s HOT). We have the bed frame, the mattress, the doona (not that she’ll need it in this weather) and all the pink linen you could poke a stick at.

She hasn’t had a toilet training accident in weeks and by the look of those hands there’s nothing of a baby left in them. My one consolation is that she has started saying ‘I’m the baby’ in response to anything jellybean related. Sweet sibling rivalry can distract me from the fact that they just grow up too fast.

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Week of Swimming

Posted on January 11, 2011 Leave a Comment


This week is a week of swimming. I’m taking Riley to a lesson every day to get her ready for next term. So this week she’s been going in with the teacher on her own. I’ve longed for the time when she’d be able to go in on her own. That I could do away with swim suits, wet clothes and warm old people/toddler water.

But it has still been hard and joyful to watch. Her little face lights up with the excitement of it all ‘swim by myself!’ and when she’s in there she bobs up and down flashing me a huge grin every now and again. And as far as bittersweet is concerned it really is the last straw. The big bed is sitting in the new room ready to be put together. She’s going from strength to strength with toilet training. And she is now holding actual conversations in person and on the phone. Not to mention, she’s started talking about ‘seeing my friends’ and how a certain boy ‘loves me’.

So it has been with a mix of immense pride and heartbreak that I watch her do her thing at 2pm every day this week.

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118/365 It’s Official

Posted on December 19, 2010 2 Comments


It’s official. Now (mostly) potty trained at home (if keen on being nude) and capable of short visits into the outside world minus the nappies and this morning we are heading off to buy her a big girl bed and paint for her new room. I also have to buy her a whole heap of new clothes because she’s shot up and none of her pants or dresses are long enough. And while I love clothes shopping for her, this is all kinds of growing up all at once. Hold me.

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The Big Girl

Posted on August 26, 2010 5 Comments

Every now and again, little ones seem to take giant leaps forward in the space of a week. This has been one of those weeks. And she suddenly seems so grown up.

She’s starting stringing more words together, ‘coming mum!’, ‘one more minute’. Yesterday, she started having a preference for what she wears. And she hasn’t had a nap in three days. I know. I’m mourning the loss in my own way. It’s a shame these leaps forward don’t involve potty training, because I’d be all into that. But I’m still waiting for it to warm up a bit to give it a red hot go.

But instead of being sad about losing baby, I’m excited about all these developments. Watching her creative personality unfold and develop every day and letting her do her own thing, more and more.

I can also see, the older she gets, the more a newborn is going to a real shock to the system. When you have a longer gap (it will be three years) there are certain things that you get used to being out of the baby stage. Like the fact that when I’m dressing her, she does most of the work, or the fact that I only have to change her nappy a few times a day, or that she can tell me why she’s upset or what she wants, or that she can entertain herself for periods of time, or that she can be in the shower on her own, and more to the point that I’ve just gotten to the stage where I can shower alone.

It will be like starting from the beginning again, and I have visions of myself holding out a sleeve of a jumpsuit, expecting the jellybean to be able to push their arm through. I’m sure I’ll have a bossy three year old to set me straight.

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My Little Lady

Posted on July 9, 2010 11 Comments


Sometimes things happen when you’re not really looking. One day I had a toddler who still reminded me very much of the baby that she once was. And then yesterday, I turned around, and there she was, my little lady. With only the tiniest trace of the baby in her eyes and cheeks.

No longer requiring her usual warm-up time to be comfortable at a friend’s house – she just happily started playing. No longer the fussy eater who I have often cajoled into eating the tiniest morsel, but a toddler with an appetite of a horse. Where after four breakfasts, I start to lose track. No longer just single words that I have to attempt to interpret, but whole sentences. Like today, packet of linguine in hand, retrieved from the kitchen cupboard: ‘mummy – scissors for noodles?’. That would be a no to the scissors, but a yes to the linguine.

And last night (not for the first time) I heard a clunk and a cry coming from her bedroom. She’d hit her head on the toddler bed. Obviously, she’s just too big for it anymore. I went in, expecting that she would want to come into our bed. But she didn’t. She just wanted a quick back rub and her doona tucked over her and she went back to sleep. She didn’t wake up again until 6am. That’s a sleep in (for her).

I don’t know if I’m extremely proud or extremely sad. Probably a mixture of both. This growing up business is bittersweet. And time tears by so fast, I barely have time to appreciate it.

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Snow White and Rose Red

Posted on December 4, 2009 3 Comments

Little red
I had the nickname Rose Red when I was little – from the fairy tale Snow White and Rose Red – not the Snow White everyone knows but the other one. Although in hindsight that doesn’t make any sense because Rose Red was the cheerful one and Snow White was the quiet one. I think it was because I grew up with a friend (who was the Snow White in this scenario) and it was more to do with how different we were than anything to do with the story. Chalk and Cheese.

She was blonde, cheerful, social and athletic; and I was brunette, shy, serioius and academic. In hindsight though I think we were probably so different because we chose not to be in direct competition with one another. We were probably a lot more alike than either of us knew.

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The Growing Pains are Mine

Posted on November 30, -0001 1 Comment

Growing Up

Proper pyjamas make her seem really grown up.

I am not a live in the moment sort of person. I either think too much about the past or too much about the future. So when I see her in her pyjamas and not the wondersuits she’s been in since she was a newborn it makes the whole growing up thing very real. And I don’t think about tomorrow or the next day or even 6 months from now.I think about how I’ll blink and she’ll have school and friends and be embarrassed at the very sight of me. And there’s a small part of me that would like to keep her to myself for a bit longer. Ok it’s not small. It’s the grand freaking canyon.

I love this post from Moosh in Indy about her daughter. I think it’s wonderful that she knows the number of freckles.

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