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:
23
Nov
2009
More top tips before having a baby including great things to buy
This is not me interviewing my mates.
OK, further to yesterday’s top tips from my mates, here is the second part of my scientific research project…
What did you wish you had done in the early days?
- Travelled more when he was small! We didn’t take any weekend breaks which are so much easier before the wee one starts to want to move around.
- Taken more holidays – they are much easier to travel with when they are small.
- Written down the dates of her key milestones (crawling, sitting, walking) etc. I’ve already forgotten a lot of them.
- Printed off photos and started an album straight away, kept a record of milestones and videoed the first seven months as only got the camera out at 8 months.
- Had baby Panadol in the house after the first immunisation. Big mistake!
- Not wished the time away. I look back and wonder where the various stages have gone.
- Relaxed and gone with the flow! They are only tiny for such a short time so I wish I had felt that I didn’t have to be doing something all the time.
- Got more stuff in the freezer for post-baby.
22
Nov
2009
Top Tips before you become a parent. How to not freak out. Maybe.
Before I had my first baby I was FREAKING OUT. I am the opposite of the laid back type – I have a level of obsessive, spreadsheeting, Boy Scout type of preparedness that makes people nervous. Put it this way – I have a document that shows what I have bought every extended family member for Christmas and birthday since 2004. I have bought and wrapped all my Christmas presents for this year. I have to hide them from visitors so they don’t back out of our house in fear. Anyway, as you can imagine, the thought of motherhood led to a whole other level of groundwork – I wanted to be ready for every possible issue and situation. Yes, I am well aware of the ridiculousness of that – I even knew it at the time but COULD NOT STOP. So I asked all my far more experienced and knowledgeable friends to answer a few questions for me. Some of them were helpful, some of them made me want to cry. If I was looking for the definitive list of answers to parenting, all the questions showed was that for as many mothers I knew, there were as many opinions. For better or worse, here is part 1 of the results. Part 2 and 3 later in the week and sometime in the near future I will post THE baby buying spreadsheet – hold on to your hats.
16
Nov
2009
The things kids say (and how to remember them)
At the risk of sounding offensively sappy and people throwing stuff at me in the street, there are a few things I have read about in recent years that I think are lovely ideas to keep memories of your children’s early years. I am already vague on the details of the Bear’s earliest months (a fog of tears and tantrums – mostly mine) and really want to have some reminders of these amazing (yes, sometimes they are amazing, my tears and tantrums aside) early years apart from photos. As I am not keen on tattooing my children’s names down my back, here are a few of the ideas….
1. The first thing I love is the idea of a parent or both parents writing a letter to your children once a year. Handwriting it on nice paper and sealing in an envelope – the idea being that the letters can then be given to your child on a certain birthday. It can obviously be whatever you want, but can you imagine how lovely it would be to have a collection of your parent’s thoughts on the year with you. How they feel about you, what they hope for you (without getting too specific and inducing some serious self esteem issues at a later date), what you’ve enjoyed doing with them during the year etc. It’s one of those things that sounds like such a good idea but actually takes a bit of discipline to do – not actually that much time, just one afternoon once a year but you need to plan it and do it. Maybe make an agreement to have them ready on the child’s birthday morning?
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).
19
Oct
2009
I was a pregnant chicken
OK so in London they have these ‘Baby on Board’ badges that they will send you in the mail if you are preggers. The idea being you can make it obvious to anyone who is looking that you are in fact up the duff, and have not merely had a couple of hundred extra cheeseburgers. Having spent some significant amount of time studying women’s stomachs while sitting down and trying to work out whether I was about to cause enormous offence – and then feeling humiliated while someone more astute (courageous?) than me jumped up to offer their seat, I always thought it sounded like quite a sensible idea. That is, until mine arrived in the mail. I put it in my handbag and there it remained for the whole nine months.
12
Sep
2009
We had a girl!
As of last week
Kate is a proud mother of two! The latest addition to the onedayyoullthankme gang is a lovely little girl. Kate reports from the new-born-baby frontline that things are going better than expected. Although her love of forward planning has backfired somewhat after assuming that second child would be similarly ginormous size as the first and buying large baby clothes for her. In fact the baby is on the petite side and consequently, according to Mum, she has passed her first few days looking “like a bald chicken in giant clothes”. Which, whilst wasn’t the fashion forward start Kate had hoped for, sounds very cute. Congratulations to Kate, Captain Sensible and Big Brother (who, in the lifelong tradition of big brothers will hopefully be hatching new ways to torture little sister as soon as possible)!
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.
9
Jun
2009
Looking freaky with 10 days to go
Sometimes I wonder what all the staring is about. Then I get a side view and I understand.
Official date is June 19, although could be any time now. Says the doctor. Who actually, as far as I can tell, has greater chance of forecasting the weather than arrival date.
I am running out of clothes and as you can see these ones are barely cutting it. Top will not take slightest growth and the pants are yoga pants. There’s no place to go after stretch fabrics. Except maybe indoor confinement and giant mumu.
So I hope baby arrives sooner rather than later.
