5
Apr
2010
Mere Male: celebrating the stay-at-home dad. Or mum really.
So we let a man into the blog in a defenceless moment….
A few weeks ago at one of our post work pub gatherings, a group of male friends and I were discussing whether we would prefer to work or be stay at home fathers. The universal view was that whilst work sometimes may just be a means to an end rather than a passion, is often stressful and demanding and is invariably fraught with politics, it was still infinitely preferable to being at home with children. I often greet my wife with a variation on the “I’d love to give up working and go to coffee mornings and play dates all week” theme (note to any fathers reading this, try this line at home, they love it despite what the reaction might suggest) but I’d bet serious money, if I had any, that if I did take my wife up on her offer to switch roles, within the week she’d come home to find someone thumb in mouth, gently rocking themselves and calling for their mummy, just not one of her children.
Why is this? A few observations:
26
Mar
2010
When good yoga goes bad
very close likeness of my yoga teacher. possibly her sister.
UPDATE: I know this is an old one but Jac is on holiday this week so I’m re-posting one of my favourites that she wrote! Cheers, Kate
If you’re not already a Yoga or Pilates devotee, there is a very good chance that on falling pregnant you’ll be encouraged to start attending a Yoga or Pilates class especially for the impregnated. Finding the right class for you can be pretty challenging and let me just say, possibly, as my recent experience demonstrated, a little bit frightening.
Finding a new yoga teacher in Madrid has not been an easy task. After sifting through several tie die themed yoga websites and brochures, I found a fairly modern looking studio and booked in for my first set of classes. Despite the shiny, new exterior of the yoga studio, the teacher turned out to be the kind of crystal, purple cardigan wearing, yoga stereotype I had been trying to avoid. The classes were just not what I was after. I wanted to work out, and this class was a lot closer to mediation than exercise.
4
Mar
2010
Buggy Running: As If Just Running Wasn’t Hard Enough
Brooke Shields with stroller. See now she can afford a gym and a personal trainer. So if she 'Chooses To Run' with a Buggy, it's got to be good.
I was not born to run. I am not motivated to run by a need to get my daily endorphin fix. If only. I’m not sure I’ve experienced this mystical endorphin rush, unless that funny chilly feeling and nausea I sometimes get from attempting to run beyond my capacity to do so counts. Running for me is HARD, requiring the mental as well as the physical energy to keep me going throughout the entire battling duration. Forty-five minutes of teeth gritting and negotiations in my head that make deals with myself to keep going to the next post, the next five minutes, permission to slow down as long as I keep going and many more creative attempts to convince myself not to stop.
31
Jan
2010
Women in piggy tails – why it can be so right.
Last week I watched a grown woman in a blond piggy tail wig and pinafore dancing around and running away from a grown man in a bearskin. No, much to my disappointment I was not at a new avant garde club night. What I do after hours is on my other blog, www.fetishtastic.com.au (shame on you for clicking).
No, I was at an under 4s performance of Goldilocks. I did spend the entire 45 minutes wondering what led these two people to be performing in this show — I am presuming they were wannabe Eastenders stars or perhaps more serious Shakespearean types. Or maybe I am doing them a gross disservice, maybe there is a whole children’s acting career path – starts with a being a giant sandwich in a mall, next stop the dizzying heights of Disneyland? I am NOT dissing the acting which was nothing short of superb. Let’s face it, anyone who can keep a group of about thirty under 4s mostly spellbound for the better part of 45 minutes is a shoo-in to win the X-Factor.
12
Jan
2010
Baby Carriers – are you a hippy or a trendy?
I know very little about baby carriers and slings. But I am nothing if not helpful, and someone asked me the other day about which one was the best, so Alex – this one’s for you. Oh, and anyone else pondering the great unknown of the carrying/wearing world. Just writing to Alex would be weird. Although she is already probably slightly uncomfortable at having a whole post dedicated to her. Quite selfish the rest of you are thinking? I know – Alex is like that. Anyway, poor Alex, don’t be mean to her if you meet her, she can’t help being like that.
So slings, carriers and pack thingies – they are your big three segments. Slings are for babywearing hippies, carriers for trendy inner-city types and packs for healthy ruddy-faced outdoorsy types. Who carry hiking sticks. Got that? I love a good generalisation. Now this is not supposed to be the pinnacle of research, just a point in the right direction for beginners, to start you off even better than my ramblings, you might want to read this Which column.
22
Dec
2009
The dad’s role in pregnancy.
a pathetic attempt to appeal to the males
I wrote a whole post about Christmas traditions. Then the Captain told me he was over Christmas. And my traditions. Hmm, thought maybe the rest of the world was too (yes, I am aware that not EVERYONE in the world is reading our blog – more fool them) and I am all about pleasing the readers. One of his friends had some helpful suggestions about how I could improve the male readership of this blog. The key one was introducing sports coverage – specifically, blow by blow accounts of any event where England is playing Australia. Probably not going to happen today, but you’ll know when I start cutting and pasting the BBC sports coverage that things have got dire.
In the meantime – how about some thoughts on the male role in pregnancy? There are any number of books on the topic and hundreds of articles written every year. Most of them focus on loving support. It’s true, loving supportiveness is good, but there are some more specific steps you can take to ensure you remain the father of your unborn child. So here are Kate’s top tips on how you can be the best pregnancy person ever:
20
Dec
2009
Things I have wasted money on
If you ask my husband — most of my wardrobe, half the bathroom cabinet, all of my top drawer, the spice cupboard, the bottom three shelves of the bookshelf and everything in my half of the CD rack — falls into this category. But for the purposes of this post I will keep it to Items I Have Bought for Children or Childbearing Purposes. Also known as Things Kate’s Friends Should Have Told Her.
7
Dec
2009
Some thoughts on the world going mad about children.
I should start this post by saying that I love my children. Even the annoying one. No really, I do. They are funny and cute and entertaining and relatively well behaved. My life changed when I had them and although I still sometimes mourn the loss of my old life, for the most part my life has changed for the better. And I suppose they have become my anchor (not in a weighing me down til I drown way, as in a nice kind of centre of my world way – yes, probably a bad analogy in retrospect) but it doesn’t mean that they have taken over my life.
6
Dec
2009
Babymoons – essential pre-child experience, shameless marketing ploy or clever female trick to squeeze in another massage? Also – how the Sydney Morning Herald shamelessly stole my scoop.
naff swimming costumes TOTALLY optional on babymoon
So I have been planning for weeks to write about babymoons and how good they are. And then Rachel Browne from the Sydney Morning Herald COMPLETELY STOLE MY STORY. I suspect some sort of espionage – the SMH has probably been hacking into the back end of the onedayyoullthankme website trying to get the edge on us. Don’t blame them – we are fully on top of the key stories. Like babymoons. Anyway – Rachel talks about how ‘Along with the pram, bassinet, nappies and size 000 singlets, expectant parents are adding babymoons to the long list of must-have items before their newborn arrives.’ WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT MY OPENING PARAGRAPH WAS GOING TO SAY. Almost – except for the size 000 singlets. And I was going to say buggy, not pram. And had a much better use of alliteration. So basically I am a much better writer than Rachel Browne. Journalist, shmournalist – I have a pink blog. Plus, I tend to write in bullet points, which is commonly understood to be a much more innovative approach than say, paragraphs. Here are my top tips:
9
Nov
2009
Pregnancy massages – or why there is discrimination in the world’s leading expert field.
I consider myself a bit of an expert on pregnancy massages. Not one of the world’s leading experts or anything. Although I would be more than willing to throw my hat in the ring for the role. Except if it involved being pregnant again. Which it probably would. Surely that’s discrimination or something? I should email the people in charge of giving out these World’s Leading Expert roles and point out my skill set – surely someone could run it up a flagpole for discussion? I’m very good at thinking outside the box and being strategic. ANYWAY.
The best pregnancy massages I ever had were at Body Freedom in Melbourne. Just a smallish salon but my god, do they know their fat-bellied women. Seriously good stuff. None of this hole in a table business – beautiful body length pillows and crisp white sheets on a comfy futon. I don’t know if she’s still there, but Jacqui has magic fingers and makes you feel all floppy and sleepy – the sign of a good massage for me (even though those World’s Leading Experts people don’t know a good thing when it emails them).
8
Nov
2009
Pre-natal classes in need of an overhaul
Photo credit: Babymama, Universal Pictures
Someone needs to throw me a line here so I can stop scaring the shit out of my friends and tell me that, yes, there are some pre-natal classes that are actually useful. Because mine was 100% completely and utterly useless.
The breathing classes were totally lame. L.A.M.E. We’re trying to reduce the pain of child birth here, not a paper cut. What sane person thinks a little in and out breathing is going to achieve anything? AND, how the hell do they expect us to remember five different breathing exercises each with it’s own little stages? In through the mouth, out through the nose, at 10 seconds change, change to out through the nose and in through the mouth, at 30 seconds change, reverse, slower, faster, now shallow, now deep…Oh COME ON. What am I going to do, write it on my palm when my waters break? P-lease. Plus, anyway, even if I did want to do anything as ridiculous as write notes on my palm for childbirth, which I totally wouldn’t, the little parabolic graphs with the different breathing changes at each stage of the contraction wouldn’t fit so I would have to, I don’t know, wear those giant hands people take to the cricket, and THEN write the notes on there. Which, obviously, takes impracticality to a whole new level.
1
Nov
2009
Things I forgot about having a newborn – part 1
They are very very small. I haven’t run into one parent yet who doesn’t exclaim ‘Oh, I forgot how small they are!’ I understand when you’ve got older children but someone who had a three month old baby said it to me the other day. She’s forgotten already? Maybe it’s a hormonal thing… - They don’t do much. Dare I venture that they are a weeny bit dull? I might get struck down by the motherhood gods for saying that, but honestly – they sleep, they eat, they make funny faces. The sum total of their skills is the occasional coo and a grimace that might, just might, be a smile if one was squinting in the right light.
- They poo. A lot. But it doesn’t smell that bad. Someone told me once it was like popcorn - would we say popcorn?? I wouldn’t go that far but it’s not that bad.
- When they do smile it’s pretty amazing.
- They have acne, bags under their eyes and goopy stuff up their nose. It is very hard to resist from squeezing acne and picking their noses. Possibly that is just me.
6
Aug
2009
Wall Stickers – Decorating the Nursery, Low Maintenance Style
I was eagerly awaiting the legendary nesting stage in the late stages of my pregnancy to see myself transformed into a fabulously feminine and motivated domestic goddess type person but instead of a full butterfly like transformation I experienced a small fluttering of domesticity by way of an urge to buy stuff. Which I am pretty sure was there before. But this time it was, at least, an urge to buy stuff for the transformation of the office like spare room into something more like a babies room. I say it was a nesting urge nonetheless. Yay. I am woman.
This urge to decorate the nursery resulted in trying out wall stickers. My perception of wall stickers before my personal venture into this entirely new world was that they were the kind of not very cool thing people who also knit “there´s no place like home” wall hangings and embroider doiles might use to “brighten up a room” by, say, creating borders and floral features on walls with stencils. Naturally the pervayers of these wall stickers would also be into lavender and purple in general. However, I have discovered wall stickers (or decals) are part of a whole world of very cool designs and interior decorating. For me it’s turned out to be one of those things that until you’d heard about them, well you hadn’t heard about them… and then when you start looking into it you wonder how you could have missed it. There are a LOT of sites where you can buy wall stickers (or decals) and the amount of choice online means you can find far more interesting designs than cheesy kids cartoons – which are the wall stickers you tend to see more of in your average home decorating store collection – if you can find one at all.
