Those wretched little moments

The Badoo was really sick last night. It started at around 11pm and went on until just after 3am. Vomiting every ten minutes until she was feebily retching and heaving every ten instead. "I don't want to do this anymore, mummy," said my weak little trouper at one point. My heart coiled.

How helpless and worried and pained I felt. And at the back of my mind, just for that one moment, but there: how am I going to manage work tomorrow? What if I need to stay home with her? How inconvenient.

Oh, how I hate it. How I hate myself in those wretched little moments. Fleeting, but slow enough to scar.

[Image via weheartit, please let me know if it's yours.]

Things I learned this week including that cupcakes can bake themselves

Happy Friyay! Another week, another... week. I overnighted in Adelaide on Sunday night for a shoot on Monday, collapsed exhausted on Tuesday following major work announcements, spent Wednesday night laughing at a home BBQ with my soon-to-be-ex colleagues and spent Thursday night baking into the wee small hours. Hello working Mum. Here's what I learned along the way...

1. When asked to bake something for a school event, you will be up until waaaaaay past your bedtime (8pm) (not really) (8.30pm) putting  together a sweet batch of 24 cupcakes with smiley faces only to find that most people just bring in store-bought stuff on a paper plate. Sigh.

2. People harshly judge mothers who travel for business.

3. There is this really fantastic site called Creative Muslims that brings together Muslim artists, graphic designers, photographers, etc. What I love about it is that it's been a great way for me to get to know a completely different (and, for whatever reason, controversial) culture and religion and appreciate the way that religion works in a lifestyle quite similar to my own. Finding a common platform to start is a great way to appreciate another culture.

4.  Blog Years: For every minute you spend in the Blogosphere, 25 minutes will have elapsed back on Planet Earth.

5. Drugwars is still around and is just as addictive as ever. Have you ever played it? I spent hours at work in the UK with my trade finance colleagues* lost in drug running. Play if you dare - you might not come back out again for many, many months.

Did you learn anything new to share this week? What do you think of store-bought cupcakes, mums who desert their young families to go away on business, Muslims, Blog Years or drug running...?

* Do remind me to tell you about the time I landed a job in international trade finance while temping as a secretary in London.

PS - Head to Lori's for showcase your amazing blog on Flog Yo Blog Friday...

[Image (and cupcakes - mine looked nothing like this good!) by hello naomi]

Just me and the P&C

A while back I wrote a post taking the piss out of people who join P&C committee. Six months later... oh my god, it's me.

I'm the PR and Marketing rep for the school. Despite the fact that I have an aversion to OPC (Other People's Children) and  OCP (Other Children's Parents), I signed up because (a) every time someone learns I'm in advertising they moan to me non-stop about how there's no PR/M rep for the school and that so-and-so's school up the road has a PR/M person and their kids get in the paper all the time.

Let's pause at (a), shall we?

School kids in the local newspaper. If it's not your kid are you not simply wondering why this random kid is in the newspaper? Do I care that Little Beth was awarded first prize in the Kindergarten public speaking competition after her ground-breaking one minute speech on Why I Like My Friend? No, I can't even fake it, I do not*.

(b) I'm sick of those smug little knowing glances people share when a working parent can't volunteer for something due to work commitments. Well, knowing-glance-givers, now one of those inconvenient working parents is on your stupid committee so... there.

(c) This year I'm class mum, I do reading a few times a term, I volunteer for the tuckshop, I'm supervising at the school disco, I'm baking cupcakes for the Principal's Assembly, I'm decorating gardens for the Kinder Lunch... and to be absolutely honest next year I plan to do all my PR/M duties via email.

and

(d) The P&C president begged.

So, I'm in. Or out.... depending on how many times I get the little mugs onto page 3 of the local rag, I assume!

Do you volunteer at your child's school? What kinds of things do you do? Do you secretly resent the parents who don't do a damn** thing?

* This is not true. I care, I really care. I was the only parent-of-a-non-finalist*** to show up in the audience at the finals of Kindergarten Public Speaking competition where Beth's speech about'Why I Like My Friend' left me holding back the tears and screaming 'bravo, bravo!' louder than her mum.


** Or openly resent. Either's fine.

*** Yes, you do need to ask: why was Maxabella the only parent of a non-finalist in attendance? Five / six year olds making speeches? I wouldn't have missed this gorgeous little event for love nor money. For shame, fellow non-finalist-parents. You should have been there to support the finalists and show your own child that even if they choose to talk non-stop about puffer fish when they're meant to be talking about friends during their own speech, Mum comes along to support your class anyway. 

[Image]

Mixing mamahood and work: a reply

Yesterday Kahli from little. lovely guest posted her 'Top 5 tips for working mums" over at Fat Mum Slim's. I started to write a comment in reply and then realised that my comment was growing and growing and, really, I should just write my own post and link on back.

So, what made my comment grow and grow?

Well, I had issues. As much as I appreciated where Kahli was coming from (and indeed, on investigation of her site, she seems more than a little lovely herself), I felt that many of her "top five tips" missed the mark for over-stretched, over-committed, over-it mummas. Here are Kahli's tips and my thoughts in reply:


1. Get organised. I’ve found the most important key to success has been organisation. The more organised I am, the less stressed I feel. Plan your weekly meals in advance, order groceries online and always organise as much as you can the night before to avoid a mad rush out the door.

100% agree with you, Kahli so, ah... moving right along.


2. Leave guilt behind. Guilt is often a working mother’s nosy neighbour, popping in when you’re busy, tired or simply feeling low. Try to leave guilt at the door. More often than not, it’s a sign you’re trying to be the best mother you can be and that’s all you – or anyone else – can ask for.

Seriously? A neighbour? Guilt is more like my permanent lodger, popping in all day, every day. I can't leave it at the door because it lives inside me. If I'm going to be a happy mumma and worker, I need to embrace the guilt and make it work hard for its keep. So if I'm feeling guilty about a particular thing, I don't ignore it, I investigate it and try to find ways to change things enough to keep guilt a happy camper.



3. Define work and play. If you’ve found yourself rocking a baby with one arm and responding to emails with another, try separating the two. When you’re working, work and when you’re mothering, mother. Otherwise you may feel you don’t either well. This might mean getting up early or working after your babies are in bed, but you’ll probably find you’re far more productive (and happier) when you do.

This one doesn't come up much for me as I mainly work away from home and when I do work from home my children are in their regular daytime places (school, preschool, with grandparents, daycare). BUT... in general I think the boundaries of 'work time is work time' and 'home time is home time' end up creating more stress than they hope to prevent. Of course they are going to blur - it's not work/life balance, it's just life. Mine changed for the better when I got a BlackBerry that meant that I can do after hours work where ever I am, if that's what I choose to do.

My advice to mums who do work from home and are stressed to the max is to question whether you really can be committed to two full-time jobs that require your attention at the same time. Look for loving childcare alternatives to help you make it work. Or ensure your work knows that you will be working from the hours of 7pm until 1am or whatever works for you. Otherwise, you're really not doing either your babies or your work a favour and it's not fair on anyone. Especially your little ones because if you're anything like me you really like the work you do and can get totally absorbed in it such that a little voice saying "Mummy can I" becomes like nails down a blackboard and it takes everything you've got not to snap bile at your little needy dearheart for interrupting your fun... Yes, I believe in the maxim "you can have it all, just not all at the same time."

As for getting up early to fit yet more stuff into your already over-burdened day, you must be joking, right?



4. Cherish your time off. We all know quality isn’t married to quantity so make your evenings and weekends sacred. Happy memories aren’t based on a catalogue of hours spent together, but rather what you did in the hours you had. The emails, washing and housework can wait.

Unfortunately, the emails, washing and housework really can't wait. If they wait they have a tendency to interbreed and create a giant overflowing inboxing, clothes wrecking, filthy mess loving beast who sucks the very life out of every household it encounters.

I don't know about Kahli, but there is no way I can just down tools and have a sacred evening or weekend as a family knowing that the beast is hungrily eating my house. So my advice here is to get the lot done as quickly as possible (cut any reasonable corner and speed a little - there are no traffic cops here) and then get out of the house for family time so that those little urchins of ours don't start feeding the monster again the second you've finished.


5. Be kind to yourself. Juggling work and the responsibilities of a family can be tough, so be kind to yourself. Take an extra long bath or buy a new magazine. And remember, it really doesn’t matter if your floors aren’t clean enough to serve dinner off. That’s what tables are for.

Be kind to yourself. Let the kids skip a bath or buy a new babysitter. And always remember that this is your actual life, not some weird dream you've found yourself in. So have a laugh whenever you can (laughing at the people with young children who are still trying to keep their floors clean would be a good place to start). That's what life is for.

Did you find Kahli's tips useful? Do you have other tips that might be helpful for over-burdened mothers?
 
[Image]

Warning: Working Mother Guilt Ahead. Please Slow Down.

I often allude to my struggle with Working Mother Guilt (WMG). So much so that it's even got it's own 'tag' on my blog. I thought it might be time to explain myself a little.

I've been working since I was 13. I don't want to make it sound like my parents threw me down a salt mine the minute I was in high-school, but essentially my younger sister (she was 11 / 12!) and I had a gig at my mum's friend's cafe on Saturday morning. We worked hard all day for about $2.50 an hour (it was 1984, but still!). Very, very, very hard. Any job after that one seemed a very good job indeed.

I've worked in advertising / marketing for about 20 years now (ouch, that's hard to say!). I started my first advertising job a week after I finished high-school and I haven't really been out of the game since then. I worked throughout uni, in foreign countries, between backpacking jaunts, work, work, work.

So, to be honest, when it came time to have my babies, the thought of not "going back to work" never even entered my head. It wasn't something I thought about, I just planned that I'd take maternity leave and then return to work.  I don't think LOML and I ever had the conversation of "will I stay or will I go?" - we just sort of knew that I would "go".

But, beware the Working Mother Guilt. The older my children get, the more WMG is settling over me like a persistent rash. I'm so lucky that my work is flexible, for without flexibility in my days I fear WMG would have covered me up by now. It just means so much to me to create a childhood for my children that is as similar to my own as possible. But how to do that when I'm at work 4 days a week?

I'm home on Wednesdays and I flog it. I bake, I play, I clean, I nuture, I coach the soccer team, I do the odd canteen duty, reading in the classroom, whatever I can fit in. By the end of the day I can barely see straight I'm that tired.

I clean at nights and work from home once a fortnight to make more room for the extras so I can devote my weekends to the Tsunamis as much as possible. I wash my floors while I'm on a conference call. I do loads and loads of laundry between emails. I race over to the school running carnival, but slink back home to work after just 1 hour feeling like I'm missing out. I do the drop offs and pick ups and mingle with the other mums, but I can't come for coffee because I've got work to do.

The biggest guilt for me right now, though, is that I'm just not fitting in the 1 on 1 attention with each of my children that I feel they deserve. It's after 7 before Maxi-Taxi's reading each night and his eyes are falling out of his head with tiredness. How can he really learn this way? And where can I find the extra time he needs to practice his writing and build up his 'magic thumbs*'? And I'd love more time to do craft and art with Cappers and swing The Badoo on her little red swing more often. What will happen when they have reading and homework to do too?

I feel selfish for being at work. I feel like I'm putting myself before my children and it just doesn't feel right. It's not as if I'm even into a 'career' anymore, I couldn't care less about proving and advancing myself. I park my ego at the door. But I do still enjoy the work itself and being part of a working team. I'm also conscious that reality bites and in today's society we work, that's what we do. My children need to know that.

Is that enough?

Will I regret working when my babies are grown and leave home? Am I being selfish for trying to fit in a 'career' as well as being a mother? Is it too late to have the 'will you return to work after maternity leave' chat? And what would my response be?

I just don't know.



* Maxi-Taxi has hyper-mobility, particularly in his thumbs. Their 'comfortable' position for him is bent straight back off the hand (wince), which makes writing and other 'close work' very difficult for him.




[Image]

The Bundchen Booby debate

The  unexpected Women Supporting Women Trilogy (Friendship, Fark off* and Frenemies) last week really took it out of me. It's hard for me to sustain thoughtful and deep. I'm much better at frivolous and shallow. However, there is a sad matter that I briefly mentioned on Friday and has stayed sad all over the weekend. It's Gisele Bundchen and the booby debate.

I'm sad because I don't understand why breastfeeding is such a loaded topic. It's such a personal, personal thing, yet as a society we judge, we criticise, we gloat, we complain and we sneer. I'm not going to go further into what I think of Gisele Bundchen and her thoughtless remarks (she is, after all, recovering from being runover by a Bugaboo) but I am going to tell you about my own experience with breastfeeding. I feel the need to share.

I struggled with breastfeeding. Struggled and struggled. I did everything I possibly could for every one of my three children, but it's never felt enough.

After a shaky, emotional, difficult eight weeks, I finally got Maxi-Taxi feeding and happy and maintained breastfeeding until just after 12 months (thank you ABA!). My milk supply was never great and we needed a nipple shield to begin with, so feeding, especially in the early months, took forever. I dedicated myself completely to getting the feeding going. I kept a feeding journal (I'm that kinda gal) and some days that child was on the boob for up to 14 hours a day. Really. But we got the milk going and everything was calm and lovely after those first weeks. I even picked up the night feeds again at eight months when I went back to work in an effort to keep the breastfeeding going for as long as we could (WMG? Yes, a little!)

Cappers went straight on and was breastfed until almost six months when she self-weaned. Bit mortifying, but a bit of a relief, really. She hadn't been thriving on the boob as my milk supply was dodgy and I just couldn't devote the same amount of time to my second born as I could to my first born. Reality bites. By six months, we were both really over it and she was close to eating 'real food' anyway. Putting her onto bottled milk at that stage just felt right. Consequently, I didn't contact the ABA about her self-weaning because as much as I had valued their support in the past, I just didn't feel like a big lecture. We both moved on to bottles without a hitch.

Then along came The Badoo. She was a sluggish, enormous newborn She had been breech and 'stuck' so she didn't move much in utero and was consequently... er... fat. And hungry. And The Badoo. On first presentation of the breast, a little hand leapt out of the wrap and slapped the boob away. I couldn't believe my eyes and nor could the midwife. We both burst out laughing.

I stopped laughing very quickly because The Badoo wouldn't go near the boob at all. She would get her mouth to the nipple and... nothing. Her sucking reflex sucked. She just never caught on and consequently breastfeeding just wasn't an option. She preferred having a bottle poured down her throat.

I didn't take the news lightly. For over eight weeks I expressed milk. Remember that low milk supply? It would take me over an hour to pump 150mls. I would get up for the night feeds, attempt to get her on the breast, feed her a bottle and then sit there with my electric pump for hours, pump, pump, pump. To this day, when I hear the suck and wheeze of an electric breastpump, I feel cold and lonely and tired and defeated.

The Badoo had a few other 'breechy' birth issues and at eight weeks we were due to go back to her Paediatrician for a check-up. Dr Lilystone is an ancient, kindly, old-school kind of doctor and.. get this... he bulk-bills. A specialist who bulk-bills? Immediately you can tell that he's one of the good guys.

I poured it all out to him. How sad I was at this failure to provide basic nourishment to my child. How I had managed with her siblings and I felt I was really letting her down. How I worried that she wouldn't be as clever, as beautiful, as happy because she would be formula-fed. How she just wasn't interested, even though I had been trying and trying and trying. His response was simply, "Maybe she's French".

"I beg your pardon?" I said, thinking did he not hear me?; thinking maybe it's time he retired.

"Well, only a really small minority of French women breastfeed," he explained. "And the French seem to be doing okay."

The relief I felt was instantaneous. He's right, I thought. The Badoo will be okay, breast or none. It's not the end of the world. I'll just make an extra effort to ensure I feed her right for the other 17 some years that I'm in charge of the food.  French, yes. Maybe she's French.

As parents, we will make millions of choices on behalf of our children. Many of these choices are carefully planned and executed. Many of them are not. Still others are choices we thought we could carefully plan, but found out that we had to improvise and adapt and change the way we felt as we went along.

Breastfeeding was like that for me. I'm a huge believer in it, huge. But I'm even more of a believer in letting the parent decide how they will feed their child. Most of all, I believe that the choice they would like to make is often not possible. Let's not judge such a personal matter lest we stir up a whole tangle of emotion. Please.


* Not being coy, really. It's just that Mum reads my blog and she might be a tad upset if I said the word fuck. Oh fuck, I said fuck. Sorry Mum.

[Image by Nicole Canto chosen to represent freedom of choice]

Are we women our own worst enemy?

I waxed lyrical about friendships on Monday. I went mental about the Sunday Life article (Jacinta Tynan, you are not my friend) on Tuesday. It's now Wednesday and I've just remembered an encounter the other day that has made me wonder even more about us women-folk. Sorry if my unintentional Women Supporting Women Trilogy is starting to bore you. Bear with me.

I was stumbling up the steps one Wednesday morning with The Badoo under one arm, Cappers hanging off the other, carefully shepherding Maxi-Taxi and his friend The Slowest Boy in the World into their classrooms. The Professor, a full-time career woman and mum of one of Maxi-Taxi's classmates who has barely given me a glance all year, said something she probably meant as light and funny, but I considered to be condescending. She said "look at you, drowning in children! It's why I only had the one child*, so I can go to work and be a real person sometimes."

After I finished punching her in the face 57 times, I managed to point out that actually (you arrogant bitch with the weird, flicky hairdo and boring corporate suit) I am a Real Person with an almost-full-time job who just happens to like drowning in children as well.

She was shocked beyond belief and stammered something about good work-life balance before scuttling off to do Far More Important Things. But the satisfaction I felt at being able to metaphorically pummel her senseless was very short lived. Why did I do that? I wondered. Why didn't I simply say that having lots of children to care for and spending as much time with them as I possibly can makes me a Very Real Person. The Realist kind of person there is, actually. Why did I feel the need to shrug off the SAHM tag (one she clearly thought was derogatory which I absolutely do not) in order to make my point?

I'm a bit of a SAHM in Working Mum disguise, I am. I'm not sure how this comes about, but thanks to my trusty Blackberry, I do try to manage my workload and hours so that I'm able to do a couple of drop offs and pick ups a week, a couple of canteen duties a term and a reading mum session every month. WMG also pushed me to put my hand up to be the Class Mum for Maxi-Taxi's class (apparently the very first Working Mum to take on the job). In addition, I dress super-casual for a city girl so they're probably all thinking "she couldn't possibly go to work in that outfit." But I think my biggest disguise is that I like hanging out with any kind of mum who'll have me and for a lot of Working Mums like The Professor, that just doesn't seem to be the case.

Now that I'm a Real Person with a job and all, The Professor is suddenly my new bestie**.

But the point is, I've infiltrated the SAHM camp, and I happen to know that they're a bit prejudice towards the Working Mum camp as well. They really are. I always feel just a little bit more WMG after a coffee with my SAHM lovelies. The never overtly spoken*** but implied judgement is that I'm not really raising my children or there for my children because I go out to work most days. A Real Mother stays home with the children. A Real Mother does the hard slog day in day out. A Real Mother. Ouch.

So I'm a bit torn between being a Real Person and being a Real Mother.

Truly I am. And I'm left asking: what is with the divide between "Stay at Home Mums" and "Working Mums"? I hate it. I don't feel it. I don't judge. I just think "whatever works for your family, whatever works for you" and I get on with bragging about the kids and bitching about the housework. What a wonderful world of mumming we'd cut ourselves off from if we only hung out with 'our kind'. It takes all kinds of women to be role models for our children and I hope I'm providing them with the right kind of balance. Not the "work and home" balance - but balance between knowing SAHMs and knowing WMs. You know, the important balance.

Have you noticed what I'm noticing? Do you think I'm being naive to think we should all be one happy family? How does it work for you?



* We will return to the Professor's 'one child' theory at a later date.
** Don't worry, I'm snubbing her nicely.

*** Oh, all right then, so ocassionally they just come right out and say it.

[Image by Ellen von Unwerth]

Yes, it's hard, alright?

It's rare for me to post twice in a day, but here I am.

I've been thinking about the Jacinta Tynan article from Sunday Life all day (yes, today. I "begrudge" motherhood for not letting me get around to reading the Sunday papers on Sunday). She asks "Is motherhood really that hard?" and I respond...

I am definitely not a mother who talks only in negative tones about motherhood. Far from it.  And I'm fine if you want to wax lyrical about the joys of parenting. That I find you gloaty, smug and insenstive does take some of the shine off all that lyrical waxing. But, go for it, I love hearing about the grand, joyful, make-my-day parenting stuff. Now that I think about it, I actually feel a bit sorry that you don't seem to understand that gettting through the hardships of parenting actually makes up a lot of the joyful bits, they really do.

However, as much as I relish the joy, I do think it's irresponsible to write an article and say things like "being a mum is one of the most seamless, joyful, intuitive things I have ever done." It's not like that for a lot of mothers and their sense of inadequacy is already off the charts without a magazine article rubbing salt into the wound.  Your own mother would tell you that (because believe me, while she was busy getting on with the "grace and joy" of mothering she was also busy gathering support from her circle of friends to get her through the next day.) And let me tell you, there is something really really really really "difficult about being up all night with the love of your life" night after night, month after month, year after year. Really difficult. Sometimes, you just can't "solve" things and that's certainly one of the hardest bits of parenthood. I'm well over 1000 nights into the "being up all night with the love of my life" bit and believe me, it's no cinch.

There's also something rather odd about the fact that you consider motherhood to be not "diffcult" not "a hardship" but rather "time consuming". 'Time consuming' is the last thing I would say to describe motherhood. It just seems so... removed. Like it's another thing to cross off your list.  In fact, overall, I found your whole article rather soulless and distant. I wonder, have you really engaged in all the icky, sticky, bitty beautiful glory of  motherhood? Really?

Oh and, by the way, I do think I deserve a medal. I think mothers everywhere do. They always have.

[Image: these photos were taken of Maxi-Taxi when he was about five months old. We were about to head to sleep school for the second time in his young life, this time for the full week's programme. It had been 178 days since I had had more than 4 hours of (broken) sleep in a night. Was it hard? Yes it was. Was it worth it? Yes it was. Just look at that little face.]

Brown paper packages, tied up with string

What did we do with Maxi-Taxi throughout the winter school holidays? Neither LOML or I could get time off work, so we prepared for lots of Holiday Care and WMG. Not so. We hadn't factored in the generosity of the Kinder Mum Brigade. Maxi-Taxi spent only 2 days out of 10 at Holiday Care, 2 with me, 1 with LOML and the rest in a variety of homes, all linked by kindness.

We made extra-special choc chip cookies (they have 3 types of choc bit plus mini-M&Ms) and took them along as a little thank you for having me.

It's amazing the difference in the way people live. One Thursday we drove up through the 'lawns' and parked in front of the 'staff quarters'. A horse wandered by. It was like walking onto the set of one of the house-porn shoots. To make matters worse, they're a really lovely family. I liked them so much before I saw their house.

The next home had a note on the front door 'I'm in my pjs, let yourselves in!' Place was a wreck. A child ate breakfast sitting on top of the table. Another child was in underpants only and promptly hid in the pantry never to be seen again. A motley dog wandered by.

No prizes for guessing which home I was more comfortable in.

Regardless of how or where or even what you live, we love you Kinder Mum Brigade. Thank you.


PS - This post is part of ♥Much Love♥'s [made it myself] week...

Children's bedroom lust (the acceptable kind...)

[Image]

I have a secret passion for decorating children's bedrooms. This secret is so well-kept that even if you visited my actual children's bedrooms, you would not realise this passion exists...

[Image]

[Image] 

Although, let's be real here, people. There is absolutely no evidence that a child has ever set foot in any of these magnificent bedroom showpieces and even if they did they would be instantly chastised for leaving marks on the air.

 

[Image]

 

 [Image]

I think sometimes I am just too practical and stingy to be a truly good decorator. Cappers bedroom is a lovely space, but she wanted pink, pink, pink and that's what she got (note absence of pink in stylish rooms above). There was a reasonable blue ticking roman blind on her bedroom window when we moved in and I managed to convince her that it was permanently glued to the wall. Turns out that blind saves the room from looking like a particularly messy marshmallow.

[Image]

For The Badoo's room, I made about 60 colourful printed butterflies (that's right, 60 of the little devils - see WMG for only possible explanation) and strung them back and forth across her room. They look beautiful and as a newborn she was fascinated, but that was the beginning and end of decorating The Badoo's bedroom. Make that practical, stingy and lazy.

[Image]

Maxi-Taxi's room is huge so the lonely bunting I hung in the window is the equivalent of hanging one balloon and calling it a party. But, you know, boys are hard work to decorate for if they're not especially nautical and oh my, have you seen the price of kid stuff these days? Besides, I have a book to read. Practical, stingy, lazy and unmotivated.

But I'll continue to dream that I'm none of the above. That I have both the capacity and desire to furnish my home in a manner that is individual, appealing and effortlessly chic. And practical. Oh, and cheap.

An aside...

I just had to add that yesterday I committed the number 1 school parent error: Maxi-Taxi went to school in school uniform on a mufti day.

If it wasn't bucketing down with rain. If it wasn't 8.58am. If I didn't have another boy in tow (the slowest boy in the world) to schlep into his kinder classroom. If I didn't have Badoo under one arm, an umbrella in the other and both eyes on Cappers as she skipped her way along in her pink gingham rain jacket and matching umbrella. If things had been different I might have zipped him home to change or at least sprung a fresh set on him at recess. I did not.

I fretted all day.

He skipped out at 3pm, big smiles. "Mum, it's really cool to wear your uniform on mufti day. Everyone thought I was great!".

Delayed shame will hit one day. But for now, phew, I'm off the hook.

When hormones make life decisions

I work for a large corporate in a reasonably full-on role. When I was pregnant with my third child I went through a frenzied, hormone-charged turn-around that went something like this...


I'm having another baby. My other babies are still babies. I'll have three babies. How can I possibly have three babies and work in the city in a 'big job'? They'll make me put the job first and then the three babies will suffer. My kids will be those kids with really cool stuff because their parents are trying to make up for the fact that they hardly know them. I used to envy those kids when I was a kid, but now I know that it's wrong wrong wrong. And what happens in the school holidays - ALL those school holidays - when the babies grow into bigger babies? Where will they go? For godsake, who will love them for 12 weeks of holiday time?

So, I decided to become a school teacher.

Yes. Throw away 15 years of successfully working in advertising - marketing and become a high-school English - Drama teacher (at least I would still have the hyphen...) earning approximately one third of the salary. But it seemed the only solution to the 3 kids / 3 o'clock pick ups / 12 weeks of school holidays dilemma that I faced.

I enrolled and did my first two semesters, managing uni, a 4 day a week job, the pregnancy and 2 under 3.  I handed in my 3 essays and 1 report 2 days before giving birth and did my half-yearly exams 8 days post-CS.

And then I woke up.

I never went back to uni and to this day I have NO IDEA WHAT I WAS DOING.

Frankly, in hindsight, I'm surprised they let us operate heavy machinery whilst pregnant. But understand that when I was pregnant it seemed like the most logical, sane thing in the world. I temporarily forgot that millions of women before me and millions of women after me manage the balance of work and family and that I can be one of those women too.

While pregnant, I forgot that I'm the sort of mum who will always, always put her children first and things would be much the same with three as they were with two. A little bit of give and take, but all of the time my kids are my number one priority and work understands that. I might not spend the amount of time with my children that other mothers do, but I'm comfortable that their lives are balanced, safe,  interesting and, most of all, uber-loving. They are happy little people.

I learnt very early on to park my work-ego at the door each day and just get on with the job so I can get home to my real life.  And that's a decision I would make even while pregnant.

[Image: Frank Maiorana]

Monster madness

The Ammmmazing Mmmmmonster party was a huge success.

We played 'chase the monster tail'...

We ate monster food...

 

We made monster masks...

We wrapped ourselves up like mummies and awarded medals to the best mummy-wrapping team...

And we went on a monster treasure hunt to find the monster softies...

It was a fantastic day.

Crafty stuff

It's Craft Central at our place at the moment. We're making 25 monster softies for Maxi-Taxi's birthday party on Sunday.

[Image: Revoluzzza]

I know, I know - who has the time, right? I think it's my working mother guilt that compels me to hand make everything. No child of mine is going to miss out on a SAHM experience just because their mum, well, isn't a SAHM... And usually I find a pattern for something fun to make and then I very carefully put it on my pile of 'craft projects I will never make'. But not this time.

So here's the link to the monster softies pattern and tutorial (you can modify it to suit your monstery preferences). This site is pretty cool for making stuff in general.

And while I was on the kids' crafty subject, I thought I'd share a link to Kids' Craft Weekly, a fantastic website that inspires me to be a better hands-on mumma every day. Editorial note: I have never actually made anything either with the children or solo from this very inspirational site.

[Image: Kids' Craft Weekly]

You see, to me, having children IS the craft project. Growing them, helping them and loving them (even when they're naughty). It all requires considerable creativity, motivation, application and skill. It's like life's biggest craft project that I'm just not allowed to half-finish like that scarf I started knitting back in 2003.

I'll post a photo of the monsters - just so you know I finished them.