Whiplash!

How the hell did I get here? 6 weeks ago I had mental permission not to do any planning. I was relishing the release from engaging in the endless quest to ‘do something’. Instead I was doing what was right in front of me. Aaaah, the path of least resistance, how I love thee.

I spent 6 weeks following my heart. It turns out my heart is a bleeding heart. A bleeding heart that feels compelled to care for those around her regardless of the inconvenience. So in 6 weeks I have gone from resting, plan-free not working towards anything but a healthy pregnancy to having more balls in the air than I can count. Big balls.

The turn around has been so complete and quick I am suffering whiplash from the U-turn.

I am in the process of gestating a baby, figuring out how to best support a gifted toddler who is desperate to go to school, moving my grandmother from her home 2 hours away to a hostel in my area and comparing university degrees for me to start in the next few weeks. The silver lining is that I didn’t intellectually plan any of this.

Even for a control freak like me, the fact that each of these situations arose organically, without guilt or obligation, without pulling strings or orchestrating things is fantastic. To me it means I am still following my heart, doing what is in me to do. Doing what I, in the most real sense, must do. That is a definition of liberation. Loving because love is in me to give. Supporting because support and compassion is in me to give. That is a definition of Bhakti.

I have some friends, dear friends, who also believe it is a definition of burning the candle at both ends. A definition of insanity. My prayer, my meditation, is that if I follow the heart, unflinchingly, without reservation or fear, the universe will support me. I will have all I need to follow through with grace. Amen.

Abomination cupcakes

Remember how I said a while back I am pretty good at research. I think I spend a minimum of 1.5 hours every day researching something. Often it is as boring as Professional Indemnity Insurance, other times is something geeky like downloading and unpacking primary school syllabus so I can better guide my toddler and sometimes it is how to make delicious treats that don’t turn my toddler into a screaming maniac. Below is the result of one such research session. (Gee I promise I’m not quite as boring as that paragraph suggests.)

If you aren’t a Mum, these are a relatively healthy cake recipe that you are bound to have the ingredients for in your cupboard right now. Just use a vegetable oil instead of applesauce.

Abomination cupcakes (a.k.a kid friendly cakes)

This is a variation of a vegan cake recipe. I have reduced the total sugar content because my son (and plenty of others) can do without loads of refined sugars. I replaced the oil with applesauce. I prefer unsweetened. And reduced the total liquid content to adjust for the liquid content of apple sauce. Note: Any pureed fruit will do so feel free to substitute what you have on hand.

Ingredients:

• 1 large lemon (juice and rind)
• 1 ½ cups all wholemeal plain flour
• ½ cup sugar
• 1 tsp. bicarb soda
• 6 tbsp. apple sauce
• 1 tsp. vinegar (Yep, vinegar, but I promise you, you won’t taste it.)
• Water

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 180°celcius
2. Put flour, sugar and baking soda into a mixing bowl. Mix them together fairly well. A wooden spoon will do.
3. In a plastic jug (easier for little hands to pour) add the zest of the lemon, the juice of the lemon and 6 tbsp of apple sauce. (I zest and juice directly into the jug to save on washing up.)
4. Now add water to the jug until the whole mixture combined is 1 cup (250ml).
5. Pour your lemon juice mixture into your bowl of dry ingredients. And add 1 tbs of vinegar to the mix. (You won’t taste it.)
6. Mix well with a wooden spoon. NB Mixture will foam. That is expected when you add bicarb soda and vinegar/lemon juice. This might be a good time for a science lesson if your kids are receptive.
7. Spoon mixture into patty pans in a cupcake tray. Fill each pan ¾ full. TIP If little hands are helping, it is worth putting the batter into a ziplock bag and cutting off the corner to make a little piping bag. It is far easier to handle than a spoon.
8. Bake until the centre of the cupcake is lightly springy to the touch. I use 12 min for little cupcakes and 15 for muffin sized cupcakes (they won’t have the muffin top).
9. Ice as you prefer. I leave them un-iced or at a push lightly dist with icing sugar. But as most icing is sugar laden, icing is a special occasion treat in our house. Then we do icing so well we ship it to friends in containers to eat by the spoon, Really.

Cheeky Monkey

From last week on, expect to find me musing about motherhood on a Monday. Weekends are ‘family time’ in our household and so there is usually plenty for me to chew over and ponder. Like what was I thinking when I decided to have kids? How much had I been drinking? And did I ever actually decide?

Sometimes I will share some of the funnier aspects of motherhood. For example we were walking through our local shopping center recently and my son was singing happily. He does that a LOT. He has recently discovered that songs aren’t written is stone and that he can change words to change the meaning. Fantastic! That is another milestone ticked off. Well his change ticked me off too. He started singing;

“Old McDonald had a farm E-I-E-I-O. And on that farm he had a Mummy E-I-E-I-O. With a Moo Moo here and a Moo Moo there…”

“Are you calling Mummy a Cow?” I ask, expecting him to say he was just being silly. No such luck.

“Yep! Mummy is a Moo-Cow. Moo!” Delightful, just delightful.

Worse still he has a habit of copying his father. (Yeah, you already have that ‘oh dear’ feeling don’t you?) Well my husband is still sickeningly in love with me, *awwww* and as never been put off by my changing body. He still finds it sexy! How lucky am I to have picked a delusional man to marry! Anyhow, Cooper hears his father call me sexy often. And I have a habit of tickling the top of Cooper’s thighs (just under his bum) because it is his most ticklish spot. So Cooper walks up behind me, and using his big boy manners, asks “Hey sexy lady, can I play with your bum?” Yet another talk about boundaries and appropriateness ensued. I had to wait until later to burst into laughter.

Forgive me…

Forgive me for my late (almost non-existent) post today. I have a cold. I know, *sniff, sniff*, poor me. Normally a cold is but a blip on the radar. Especially when your role doesn’t come with colleagues to cover for you, sick leave or clients who can wait till tomorrow. But this one threw me for a six. Probably because the full extent of medication I can take is Panadol; pretty much everything else is dangerous for Bubs in the first trimester. And Panadol exacerbates my morning sickness (which according to all conventional wisdom should end in a week *scoff*).

Anyhow, I have unplugged for the most part of the past 48 hours and slept as much as possible. Hence the lack of blogging prowess. I promise to have something reasonable for you for the weekend.

xxx

Heart V Head

I got a massage this week. It was wonderful and it reminded me just how much I abuse my body and that I need massages on a much more regular basis. It also helped that I have a fantastic massage therapist. Kinda comes with the turf when you administer a Massage College like I did pre-motherhood. But what is extra special is that my therapist was also my kindergarten teacher. It’s not as creepy as it sounds. Once we got over the fact that she had wiped my bottom once upon a time, we became friends. And its nice to have someone remember you from your childhood.

She also has fantastic hands. And a way of relaxing you and keeping you talking about whatever is bugging you without making you feel like she is prying. She asked me the one question I have been skirting around for weeks. If my goal is to have my Nan choose to go into care, why am I working so damn hard to allow her to remain at home?

The question alone bought tears. And laying face down there was not much I could do to stem them flow. Or the realisations. I believe that given enough love and care she will accept gracefully her age. I find it hard to believe that she woman she once was is [entirely] gone, and I feel obliged to honour what her wishes would be. She cared for so many people in her time that I believe I am karma in action – giving back the love and consideration she gave out.

I also want her to be safe and cared for. So my challenge is tempering my heart with my head. And learning to cook smaller batches, the 48 meals I cooked for her this weekend has her freezer packed to bursting.

PS My therapist is Sandra you can find her here.

Real names, real embarrassing

I have a thing about raising my son in the real world. We teach him the names for vegetables, explain where beef and chicken comes from, give him real explanations about differences in race, culture and religion and taught him all the proper names for his body parts.

There are obvious advantages we see to this type of parenting; there is no backtracking to explain lies later, no embarrassing bullshit explanations that can be repeated in company, no later rebellion when he realises that Baa Baa Black Sheep is actually on his dinner plate.

I didn’t think about the disadvantages though. They aren’t quite so obvious.

We had about 40 minutes, once at our gate, to wait before boarding our flight to Cairns. There is nothing worse than dragging a toddler through an airport at high speeds then asking them to sit still and calm for 3 hours. Trust me, I have done that before. We were sitting across from a young Scandinavian family (no stereotyping here, from the comics the children were reading it was obvious) in the lounge; Mum, Dad and 2 girls about 4 and 7. It was just then that my darling little man decides it’s a good time to put his hand down his pants. (As a side note we have rules about that; 1) at home with no guests go for it 2) in public don’t even think about it, it could offend people.)

I lean over and whisper that we are in public, and that it’s not ok to put your hands down your pants. To which he replies, at the top of his lungs, “BUT I WANT TO PLAY WITH MY PENIS NOW!” Yeah, you guessed it, I couldn’t find a hole to crawl into and he just didn’t let up with the playing or the running commentary. When I thought I would just die with embarrassment the beautiful Scandinavian Mum across from me leans over and, with a smile, says ‘It’s a wonderful age, isn’t it?’ Damn! I was hoping she couldn’t speak English.

*Photo credit

Day from hell! Part 2

Remember Day from hell had last week? Well it was actually more hellish than I described. You see there was another minor complication that I wasn’t at liberty to discuss. So let me fill you in.

During the 2 hours of tantruming I was also vomiting. Nothing drastic, no food poisoning, my body just doesn’t seem to appreciate food at the moment.

Then there was the getting dressed. I was having the mother of all fat days! I thought my tummy looked podgy (more so than usual) and flabby and nothing fit me. I tried looser clothes and then I just felt like a slob. I slammed wardrobe doors and literally sat amongst a pile of discarded clothes and cried!

The carrying of the bleeding and broken child home was also more difficult as well, because I had a hell of a bruise on my right elbow. Not from being a klutz; though I am un-coordinated and I would forgive you for believing it was self inflicted. I had had a blood test the previous day and the pathologist had hyper-extended my elbow and stabbed me as deep as possible to extract the blood. It would have been quicker and less painful to punch me in the nose and try to catch the nose bleed.

Finally to top off the day my two year old called me ‘fat’. I nearly cried (again). He called me ‘Fatty-Patty’. To check that he wasn’t just rhyming nonsensical sounds I asked him what it meant. He replied “Means you eat too many cookies like Cookie Monster.” Nope, not nonsensical silliness, real two year old logic. *Sigh*

So if you haven’t yet put the puzzle pieces together I’ll spell it out for you; As of today I am 10 weeks pregnant. [Double points for those who guessed it from part one.] Pregnancy is not the easiest time for me. (Before you tell me its all in my attitude – yes, I am holding space for it to be easy and breezy.) I am certainly not part of the glowing skin, beautiful hair and radiant brigade. I am more of the vomit from dawn to dusk, cravings and moods swinging wildly type. You will get to hear all about it in the coming months – just you wait.

*Photo credit

Calm presence

Calm and centered is my home. Not my actual home, I live with a toddler. And even before the bundle of joy invaded blessed our home our place was rarely calm. I regularly cooked breakfast for a hoard of hung over youths on a Saturday or Sunday morning. My sister was well-known for saying ‘Rae won’t mind’. And I never did. Back then we were really the only couple in our local group of friends with a place of our own. It was clean, stocked with food and plenty of seating. So we often had people around for dinner, drinks or parties. (I seemed to collect bachelors who preferred our place to their Mum’s). Some friends even used our spare room as a cave to study in when they lived with their folks.

Despite the chaos I have lived amongst for as long as I can remember, I still feel most comfortable in a calm tranquil place. Internal dichotomies anybody? I know my parents reading that line (yes they are regular readers now) will be shooting tea out their noses. Calm wasn’t always my home. I had a penchant for rebellion, drama and general voice raising growing up. Until the drama chewed me up and spat me out. Then I had no choice but to find another way. My coaches/therapists during that time spent a lot of time re-framing that to I chose to find another way. Since then I have chosen to hold space instead of raging.

These days I am volatile – because I am human – but the place I keep returning to, in the moments between, is calm.

I am beginning to realise the biggest gift I can give to my son is my calm presence. I know that a clam presence is one of the biggest actions I can take to help create a peaceful world too. I know from experience that my calm presence makes for smoother relationships, fewer misunderstandings and happier days. These truths will be easy to remember when I am lounging (as you read this) in sunny Cairns on a holiday with my parents (read: 2 more sets of toddler wrangling hands).

It won’t be so easy to maintain my calm or remember how important it is when I am on a 3 hour flight with a 2 year old who just wants to run and scream and jump and explore and introduce himself to each and every passenger. One. By One. “Hello my name is Cooper. What’s your name?’, “Hello my name is Cooper. What’s your name?’, “Hello my name is Cooper. What’s your name?’, “Hello my name is Cooper. What’s your name?’……

Day from hell! Part 1

Yesterday was a shitty shitty day. Sorry Nan I know it was your birthday, but we will celebrate your birthday on Sunday. So I would love, Love, LOVE to just forget yesterday ever happened. But alas, vanquishing days isn’t yet in my repertoire so the next best thing is to share the tragedy so as it may become a comedy [for you].

My day started at 7.20am, pretty usual really, with the toddler crash tackling me in bed crying ‘Are you awake yet Mummy?’ 20 minutes later however, it was already the beginning of the end. The beginning of the end sounded something like this:

“Mummy, can I have a cookie please?” He had his head tilted to the side and the cutest smile he could muster.

“No, Cooper its waaaaaay too early for a cookie hunny.” At this stage I was almost dismissing the request – we’d all eat cookies before 8am if we could justify it, right?

“But Mummy, I said please!”

“Cooper, you know the rules no cookies before 10am” So shoot me – it’s a time I can live with. “Do you want me to set the alarm?” Yes, he enforces times to the minute.

“Daddy will give me a cookie. Can you bring Daddy home?”

Yes, straight from the horse’s mouth. Daddy said it was ok to eat cookies at breakfast time? Wouldn’t surprise me really, his father regularly ate cake for breakfast before Cooper began eating breakfast with him. But I let it slide.

BUT he just wouldn’t let go of that bloody cookie. He alternated between tantruming full on, negotiating with me “Can I have ice cream instead? Licorice – licorice isn’t a sweet!” and just acting out. An hour of this and you could have heard the keys being pounded from the other side of the house. Hubby got a rather strongly worded email that stopped shot of saying “YOU GAVE HIM A COOKIE AT BREAKFAST TIME? WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING?!#! HE IS MAKING MY LIFE A LIVING HELL!”

When I got a random call from my parents I rolled my eyes at the timing. Until Mum told me she was returning Coopers call. The little bugger had called MY MUM to dob on me that I wasn’t giving him a Cookie. For Fucks sake! Mummy just needs a break!

I managed for another 45 minutes then I caved. I changed the digital clocks to read 10:00 at 9.45 and gave him the damned cookie. For 2 minutes I had pure, blissful silence, then: “Mummy, can I have another cookie please?” My face must have said it all because he didn’t wait for an answer he just began a chant of “I want another cookie!”

By this stage we should have already left for play group. I started with the easy bits and packed his lunch box then I started dressing him. Well, trying. I tried and I reasoned and I wrangled and I sighed and I screamed and I shrieked and I threatened and I gave up and then I threatened some more. I am actually quite chuffed that I didn’t smack (I’m don’t want to be that kind of Mum) and I didn’t lock him in his room.

We finally walked out of the door at 10.35. Yep 35 minutes late and its about a 10-15 minute walk (if you have legs about a foot long). I was facing the prospect of walking into a relatively new play group, with a toddler 45 min late, with no explanation other than ‘he wanted a cookie’ or more generically ‘we had a bad morning’. Instead I sat on my front fence, totally defeated, called my husband and cried. I recall blubbering something along the lines of ‘I don’t want to go, I’m the crappest Mum ever! You can’t make me go!”

The morning got worse. We went to the park. Cooper ran full pelt (which is pretty bloody fast) into the supports that hold up the play equipment. (For a bright kid he sometimes does some daft stuff.) He hit himself on the side of the head, staggered around unable to walk straight and fell face first onto a cross-bar, splitting both his lips. Screaming like his intestines were being removed, dripping blood from the mouth I carried the war wounded home. Standing at my front door, toddler still sobbing, I found my pockets empty.

Empty? How the hell are they empty? What the fuck did I do with the house keys? They weren’t in my bag, my pockets, the lunch box. Damn, damn, damn! Then I remembered the letterbox. I checked the mail on the way to the park and my house keys were still swinging pleasantly from the lock clearly marked number 2.

Stay tuned for Part 2. This day actually got worse.

Ode to Peggy

It’s my Nan’s birthday tomorrow. I won’t tell you how old she will be because she has Alzheimer’s and can’t remember herself. (And I think it would be rude to out her age here.) We can safely say she is pushing 90. Nanna, or Nanna Peg as my 2-year-old calls her, is responsible for my love of food and affinity with simple cooking & my love of reading.  (She is also quite possibly responsible for my addiction to pickled cucumbers – or else I might just be weird.)

One of the saddest things about her deteriorating memory is that the food she cooked every single day, from recipes she never ever wrote down, were the first causalities. The bonus of sitting on a high stool in her kitchen every chance I got as a child, watching her cook, stealing the ingredients, snacking with her whilst reading or watching the footy is that my taste-buds know her food inside and out.

There are details of my grandmother that are committed to memory that I will never forget (fingers crossed I missed the Alzheimer’s gene). She was the first with a hug, she ate and cooked humble, hardy food, her skin was always soft, she did her hair with rollers and tied it up in a scarf until it set, she had a shoe collection to rival Carrie Bradshaw’s, she always set the table, she ate granny smith apples with salt, her meat pie and her bacon bone soup were to die for. Above all else she dedicated her whole life to nurturing and loving.

I used to think her path as a carer and home maker was old-fashioned and lacking in value. Oh how naive I was. The unfaltering dedication she showed caring for a procession of family  was saintly: from her husband to her children, her ailing parents to her grandchildren without so much as a sabbatical between them (us). She even opened her door to countless ‘strays’ over the years as well. The risk of your legacy in life being only love is that you can only hope those you touch keep your love alive.

In my effort to keep Peggy’s love alive I am taking a leaf from her book.  Last night that leaf was bacon bone soup. If my husband’s face was anything to go by – he felt just as loved as I used to as a child.

Thank Fuck for girlfriends…

…and their ability to remind me that life is unedited. Long, labour intensive and full of challenge. Oh goody!

There is something special about a close female friend. Yes, I have close male friends (well had, but we will get to that later) too, and they are fantastic in a whole other way. Male friends give me the best hugs; remind me there is something solid and grounded and strong around to hold onto. Female friends hug me less and embrace my heart more. Sigh. Girlfriends love me enough to know they can call me on my bullshit and that I won’t be offended. My girlfriends know when to cry with me and when to point out the crocodile in my tears.

My girlfriends are my girlfriends precisely because they have similar hearts. They are ‘my people’. Similar but different – they have varied perspectives. Many of them directly contradict mine, but that is to be expected when you are the hippy leftist that hangs out with conservative lawyers. Sometimes i find it laughable that two of my besties (of over a decade no less) are lawyers who between them will have more degrees than the average graduating class. But I digress. They know how to talk my language, to direct my flow of thought; they reveal myself to me in conversation.

Heart conversation is such an intrinsic and divine feminine act, talking to each other’s souls through our personalities. There is no mistake when we feel some divine presence when we really share ourselves with girlfriends in conversation. We feel it, because it is divine. Sometimes I can see us as ageless crones passing divinity back and forth between us as words.

I cried. She laughed. I said ‘but’ and she kindly pointed out my resistance. She saw my claws and my soft underbelly and she recognized herself. She told me what I already knew. But hearing it from another, somehow, made it different. She told me I had to learn to be infinitely open and infinitely loving. She told me I needed to soften.

I washed the tears from my face when I washed my hands, because really, every life changing conversation is interrupted by a toddler crying ‘Toilet time!’ Isn’t it?

*Photo Credit

Things that matter

I have some people in my life that I would do anything for.  You heard me. ANYTHING. Before you mentally set about disproving me; Yes, I can imagine times I could kill for them, surrogate their children, break the law, donate organs, fly across the globe. You get the picture.

Kelly Diels got me thinking this morning about what makes these people so special? What have they done to lay claim to my spare kidney? Well, they are family. They are ‘my people’. Not all of them share my DNA. Not all of them (very few in fact) live close enough for me to have an easy coffee with. Most of them I don’t see as often as I’d like. But none of that matters.

These people support the very best in me. They call me out when I’m slacking. They are clear when I’m confused. They say what needs to be said, even when they know it will stretch the friendship. The hold me and let me cry. They cut me slack even when I don’t deserve it. Especially when I don’t deserve it. They bear witness to my value when I don’t have the eyes to see it. They accept all sides of me (and boy, do I have a few). They accept my wildness even when it pushes their own buttons – God I love them for that.

They have sat crying with me in the cold grass in the wee hours, mediated my temper, offered a heart-felt ‘I told you so’ in the morning and then fixed my hair. They have helped me tend to a battered and sore body without flinching. They have heard the blackest secrets of my soul and not turned away. Not even I could do that. They share in my private world in a way others never will.

These people matter. These things matter.

*Photo credit