Month: November 2005

The first six weeks:
Arrival night:
Early Days:
How cool is that. The achievements to date are:

1. Your arrival not triggering a complete mental breakdown on my part
2. The family unit feeling so much stronger, so much tighter, so much more real. Like less than three offspring suddenly seems like we were just pretending.
3. That 8 hour sleep thing – you can do that, at night, any time and and as often as you like.
4. The smiling – oh my LORD that gummy, open mouthed smile that melts my heart and makes me laugh out loud every.single.time.
5. The very early recognition by you that when it’s dark outside – lets get this feeding thing over and done with quickly. Keep that up. That is good. Maybe you could have a quite word with Oscar that 5am, or infact 4.53am is NOT a time for him to be starting his day.
6. The loving of the breast. This is good. But I have to warn you, a surrogate will be involved soon. It won’t be as squidgy, or as warm and you won’t be able to take it in your little fists and hold on for dear life, but there will still be a smiling face staring down at you – it’ll probably be your dad so don’t freak out too much. He may have man boobs but I promise that’s my milk in the bottle. It also won’t attempt to drown you either as is often the case with the Real Deal. I’m pretty sad about this, that’s it’s going to be a necessity in a couple of months and well, that’s just life.
7. The loving of the bath – how you throw your head back so far you get water in your eyes and blink and blink and kick and kick.
8. The definite different cries. Thank you for so clearly differentiating between the hungry (that weird little panting thing you do is very cute), tired and oh-my-God what did you eat I’m in pain cries. I never got this with your brothers and really, it bothered me. I’m feeling very smug knowing your cries and how to react.

Things I really need you to work on:

1. The screaming in the car. Is it because you’re facing backwards? Because quite frankly that would freak me out too but Dude, you have THE comfiest, cushioniest, plush, deluxe seat out of anyone in the car. Just kick back, relax, and stop.the.screaming. I’m already imagining the trips to and from work/daycare in p.e.a.k. hour three days a week and feeling the early onset of a monumental headache.
2. The screaming post bath. We’ve done it enough times now for you to know I am going to put a nice clean nappy and clothes on you. I’m even going to give you a lovely massage with that weird massage foam stuff that smells so good and isn’t greasy at all. Is it the 3 white Bonds Wondersuits in high rotation that you are retaliating against? You don’t like blue? You’re offended if I put you in yellow? Again, enough with the screaming.
3. The skin rash. I realise and accept that unfortunately all three of you boys have inherited my big pored hideous skin. I am truly truly sorry. But enough with the rash already. You are so so cute, and the rash remnants and occassional breakouts really detract from it. Can’t you have a quite internal word with your system and work it out?

So its 8 to 3 – I reckon that is pretty darn good. It’s only been six weeks but my goodness, it feels like you’ve been here a lot longer than that, and none of us can even really remember how life was before you were in it. And that is a wondrous thing. 🙂

we have daycare for Jasper.

It’s not ideal, in that they can give me 2 months notice if an employee in the building its housed in (Sydney’s first and I believe currently only 5star green building) needs a spot, but we have a place, in a good centre, walking distance from work.

The baby health clinic nurse told me not to worry about it, that miracles happen and to just keep in contact with the places I really wanted. And look what has happened.

A happy moment laden with maternal guilt and anxiety. Is there any other?

Here it is, or at least bits of it. Sorry about the image but the digital camera is dying and only small images are acceptably close to being in focus…
Also featured are our new looooong dining table and my favourite jug. Just because.
mtc
Bec 

that in 10 days it is my birthday. Next Thursday, 8 December. I’ll be 33. Please note it in your diary for future reference.

Today I spontaneously bought two pairs of denim jeany things – because really, almost 6 weeks in trackiepants or equivalent is long enough. They’re size 18 BLAH. Normally I’m 14 on the bottom half of my body, 16 on a bad day and for about six months leading up to turning 30 in a size 10 – TEN – something I’d never been in.my.life. Seriously, I just went from babywear straight into a woman’s size 14, all with my Mum standing at the changeroom door saying things like “when I was your age I could meet my hands around my waist, it’s amazing how you have no waist,” or “when you’re old you’ll be one of those women who gets a skirt of fat around your stomach, you’ll have to be so careful,” or “oh no, dreadful. You look like a sack of potatoes, get it off.” All said of course with great love and concern about my wellbeing. This is also the woman who raised me to believe I could achieve anything I put my mind to, to never ever give up and to always stand up for what I believe in. Although those times I’d come home crying from school saying I was ugly (there were braces, very.bad.acne, glasses and real, not perceived, fatness) it would have been lovely if her reply had been a bit more than, ‘but you have lovely eyes’. God, sometimes being adopted has a lot to answer for.

Anyway, they’re an 18. They’re actually too big, they’ve fallen off twice (I now need to buy a belt – don’t you just love the whole retail viscious cycle) but the muffin top that would have resulted in the 16 was just too depressing. I am of course guessing about the muffin top as I had a baby wedged on my chest in the Baby Bjorn and a husband looking more and more bored so I just bought them without enduring the whole hideous this sure isn’t Narnia world that is the change rooms at Target. That’s right. Pants, not tried on, bought from Target. I know I know, the heady heights my life currently orbits in.

Tomorrow, or maybe Wednesday is the day of going to the Dark Side. Yes, you know what I mean, the Death Star to those of us who love to bake, eat and cook with oil and put butter on our bread – the G.Y.M. My employer is trying to keep us all healthy and worked out a deal with Fitness First, the mothership of all evilness in the realm of physical pain, yummy mummys, small dick weight lifters, bimbos, bimbettes and all those people who enjoy running on a treadmill and watching TV with the sound off.In a moment of complete I’m incubating stupidity I signed up. I figured its cheaper, it will be automatically deducted from my pay so I won’t notice it (hah!) and that if I’m paying for it I know I’ll use it. EVERY single normal person who has ever had a gym membership is now laughing into their second bowl of icecream for the night. The reason I haven’t been a member of a gym in about 10 years is because:

1. I have very obsessive tendencies, so instead of just going three times a week and walking on a treadmill, it won’t take long before I get up at 5, jog to said gym, do a class, lift some weights and God knows what else. It is quite scary.
2. the smell. That weird mix of gym socks, sweat, deodorant and god knows what else that just reminds me way too much of PE at school.
3. Despite my ludicrously ample boobage, I have quite a masculine build and basically start to resemble a wombat – a dumpy nuggety lump of gristle – way too quickly. This is completely contrary to why I was there in the first place, to drop kilos and look svelte. I have never ever EVER looked svelte in my life. It is something I strive for. Forget world peace, forget career success, forget fame – if I could look svelte for just one day, no, one month, I would be such a happy woman.
4. the people who go to the gym scare me. There are never ever other oompa loompas like myself. Never anyone with bits that wobble or overhang. No one else ever seems to sweat as much as me. Ever. I feel like they’re all looking at me, which is ridiculous because I know they’re so busy checking themselves out in all those friggin mirrors they’re not caring one jot about me, until they think I’m having a heart attack because of 5.
5. I go very very red when i do any form of exercise. You can understand then, that with the wobbly bits, the sweating and the red face issues, I am NOT looking forward to gym outings at all. But it’s that or the return of the black dog of body issues. It would also mean a whole new work wardrobe for which there is no budget.

So… its to the gym I go. It’s enough to send me to the icecream without even worrying about a bowl.

In keeping with my obsessive tendencies, I’ve become a picture taking, comment checking manic. Sometimes I’ll just log in while I’m waiting for water to boil. Just to see if there are new comments. I’m starting to take pictures of really dubious subject matter like fruit soaking for christmas cakes. I’d load the shot but Blogger is behaving very weirdly this evening. And even that is irritating.

says there are currently 8 people online.

Shall I put the kettle on?