Not a literal bus, a metaphorical bus.

It could also have been a metaphorical UFO, or a metaphorical flying cow – I was too busy crawling towards the safety of my bed to look closely at whatever it was that hit me.

Regardless of metaphorical object, I am finding week 9 of pregnancy very exhausting and very very nauseating and something horrible keeps happening with my blood pressure. All of this means that I have spent a lot of this week sleeping, trying not to puke, or laying down with my ankles firmly above my head.

Pregnancy is so attractive, don’t you think?

In lieu of a proper post, I present you with photos of my children.

Because they’re cute.

In other news, it is Frogpondsrock’s birthday today (HAPPY BIRTHDAY MUM!) and she is going to be shaving her head in the Leukaemia Foundation’s World’s Greatest Shave.

She would LOVE if you could donate a few dollars towards the cause, because as we know, Cancer is a Bastard and deserves to be cured. Until then, the Leukaemia Foundation is using the money to fund research and to help out patients.

Don’t tell my husband, but I just stole his last pair of clean trackpants to wear. Not that I should be needing to steal his trackies at this early stage of pregnancy – no, my belly is not large enough to make my pants uncomfortable yet. The problem is that apparently, I keep buying comfy “round the house” clothes for my family and forgetting that maybe, I need some pajama pants of my own.

WOE IS ME.

As I was stripping off my skirt and leggings in the bedroom, Amy was chatting to me and I told her she absolutely was not allowed to tell her father that I was stealing his pants.

Of course, she told him. I think I’m quite proud of her honesty (considering he would have noticed in a couple of minutes anyway).

So, there. My daughter doesn’t lie all of the time (thank god) and I am wearing stolen pants.

This is my glamorous life.

***

I am coveting a wheelbarrow load of chook poo.

I KNOW, INTERNET, POO AGAIN.

My garden is looking a little worse for wear, so today, we braved Bunnings with two children to firstly, buy new septic joiners (MORE POO) so that we can move our toilet inside (EVEN MORE POO) and secondly, buy mushroom compost (MUSHROOM POO!) and potting mix.

Now all I need is Nathan to walk to the other side of the paddock with a shovel and the wheelbarrow and return, bearing gifts of chook poo. (POO)

It’s not even like it’s hard – the chooks rather nicely piled it up for him. Of course that was before the dog tore them all to shreds, leaving only one chook alive, but you get that. (Now I’m adding DEATH and GORE to the mix.)

But it’s raining and sadly, there will be no garden safe manure for me today.

***

We were in the Supermarket after Bunnings, with two bored and hungry children. This could have been a recipe for disaster and whining, but, it was … okay. Not fantastic and not amazing, but okay.

Yes, they whined (pleasepleaseplease can we have blueberries? please mummy, look, there are grapes!), but the content of the whinging was wanting fruit. You know what? I can deal with that.

For the record, they got what they wanted.

At the same time I noticed, just how nice it is to have kids that are reaching the older end of the “little kid” spectrum. Five and three? So much nicer than three and six months old. Really really.

The hardest part about attending MONA FOMA and all that it entails, is coming back to real life afterwards. The transition from blogging photos of rock gigs, back to everyday life conversations about how are calves are born (hang on kid, I’ll youtube a cow birth for you) and why is that bird dead (the cat tried to eat it, but the dog stole it instead) and can I poke it (please don’t, it probably has lice, but if you want to watch it finish dying, go ahead. Maybe we can get the cat back to speed the process up).

That is the hard part.

Of course, any morning that has an entire conversation about cow vaginas and how babies get out of their mummy’s tummy can’t be counted as terribly boring. I suspect that Amy is going to be That Girl in class this year, because I let her know that babies arrive via vagina and she’s not one to practise quiet tact if Boy A is telling everyone that doctors cut your tummy open to get the baby out. (His mother had a caesarean – I expect it’s a slightly easier conversation to have than the vagina talk.)

Real life is where it’s all at however, and while I might be bemoaning the lack of rock concerts in my future, eventually the children will get older and there will be more concerts and less morning sickness and nappy changing.

In the meantime, we go from this:

To this:

I think I’m okay with it.

So, here’s the thing:

Amy,

I don’t care that the other girls in your class have heeled shoes. I am not buying you a pair. You are five years old and there will be no heels until you’re as tall as I am.

I really don’t know why your friends apparently wear lipstick, but I will not be letting you use mine. Here’s a lip balm that has a little glitter in it. You can use that instead. I know that it’s not coloured. That is the point.

No, you may not listen to Lady Gaga on Youtube. Yes I know that Mandy* does, but that is no reason for you to as well. I don’t care that you hate me, because I know you don’t. No, I’m still not letting you watch.

Yes, I probably am ruining your life. I really don’t care though, because you’re five and it’s my job to destroy your dreams of high heels and red lip gloss.

You cannot speak to me like that – I am your mother, not your school friend and you can go to time out until you’re ready to speak properly.

Dresses are pretty, but mini skirts are not. Put some leggings on underneath. Right now. Or you can go to bed instead.

Fat is not a bad thing. Everybody is different and everybody’s body looks different. Eliza* is not fat, she is a lovely, smart, friendly little girl and if you hear the boys calling her fat, you tell the teacher immediately. She doesn’t need to hear that at her age.

No, Matthew* has no idea what he is talking about, don’t listen to him.

Susie* said that pigtails are ugly and won’t let you wear them? Fuck Susie. She doesn’t get to say how you can wear your hair to school. If you like pigtails, you can wear them. Wait, you don’t like them anymore? Shit.

You tell the teacher if the boys are calling you and your friends ugly.

You tell ME if someone makes you feel bad.

Dammit, tell SOMEONE.

There are so many things wrong here and I can only muddle through as best I can.

***

When did these become the conversations we are having with our daughters? When did we stop fielding requests for ponies and start fielding requests for high heels?

When did this become the norm, and how on earth are we meant to raise intelligent, smart, beautiful, happy daughters when society in general insists on telling women that they’re not enough?

It’s ridiculous and it’s making me sad that I even need to have these conversations with Amy – even as I know that in this day and age, these discussions are not something I can escape.

***

* Not real names, obviously.

I’m the oldest child in my family. My brother was born when I was five and a half, so I was old enough to help out a good deal when David was a baby. I remember trailing him around the property when he was toddling, making sure that he didn’t wander into the bush, or fall into a nest of jackjumpers. I can’t say I was always successful at avoiding the jackjumpers, but I never lost him when I was meant to be watching him.

I can only imagine that having a big sister is very much like having a little brother. Equal parts lovely and please-just-make-me-an-only-child-again. Not that I think that way anymore – my brother is 17 and old enough to not pull my hair or destroy my makeup. He just eats all of my food instead.

At the end of the school year, Amy’s school threw a large picnic at a park, and parents and siblings were invited. We took Isaac along, despite me being very slightly nervous about how he was going to cope with 150+ kids of varying ages.

But we took him, first to the pool to watch Amy swim and play and then to the picnic.

I wasn’t sure how Amy would cope with her little brother trailing her while she played with her friends, but she was brilliant.

She looked after him, made sure he was safe, that he played with her and everyone and it was just really great to watch.

Amy is, frankly, a fantastic big sister. Yes, they fight (because Isaac is definitely everything a little brother should be), but they play and chatter and giggle and of an evening, when I’m at the end of my tether and really just need them to go to sleep, they will lay in bed and talk. And because my house is made of tissue paper and hope, Nathan and I can hear everything, which makes us smile.

I remember bringing Isaac home for the first time and Nathan and I were wondering out loud how Amy would cope to the new family addition. I remembered what one of my blog commenters had said (and I cannot remember who it was – it was 3.5 years ago now) “Give her two weeks and she won’t even remember what life was like before him.” In the first few days of transition and chaos, I held onto that.

It’s true though. Amy didn’t remember what life was like before him and they fell in love, just as hard as Nathan and I did with them.

It’s nice, to watch the relationship between my children and to know that somewhere down the line, they will rely on each other as much as they rely on Nathan and I.

Christmas is just around the corner, although I am a little stunned at just how fast it’s snuck up. I think school not finishing until the 21st contributed to the turn-around-and-smack-there-is-a-holiday feeling that I’ve got, but there you go and here we are.

My Christmas shopping is done and we’re not planning on leaving the house again until sometime after the holiday insanity is over. We’ve (rather selfishly) told our families that we are no-way-no-how going anywhere with the children this Christmas day and that everyone is welcome to come to us. I’m just not prepared to deal with tired, over-excited children in someone elses house.

What’s been nice though is the couple of weeks of smooth sailing we’ve had. Sure, my body hasn’t quite cottoned on to the fact that I am no longer pregnant and my uterus is still feeling annoying and sure, I’m puking more than I would like, but it’s only three and a half weeks. It will calm down eventually. Hopefully.

But there are good things happening.

I was gifted a kitchenaid from the ever lovely Stephen who won one in a food photography competition and thought I might like it. Once I’d stopped being struck dumb by his generosity, I was able to accept it, while quietly falling apart in excitement.

This meant that I was able to pass my stand mixer on to Catherine, who is an amazing baker (she did my wedding cake) and didn’t have a stand mixer of her own. She tells me that she’s in the process of setting up a facebook page, so I’ll link you all up once it’s live.

Frogpondsrock came up with an idea and the Internet pulled together and organised Annie an iPad. The Internet is amazing.

Amy has grown a huge amount this year and jeans that I didn’t think would fit her for another year, she is wearing now. Her phobia of flying things (beetles, bees, insects) continues, but that is mostly manageable. She can recognise all the letters of the alphabet and can write her name. She can also copy any word you write down, but she cannot read yet. Phonics are not her thing, so we’re looking into flash cards for teaching her words by sight. I seem to remember that that is how I learned to read, by sheer memory.

We have no doubt that Amy’s memory is spectacular and so this is probably the easiest way to move forward with helping her to read. She remains hugely interested in any and all electronic devices. We thought about buying her a Nintendo for Christmas, but decided against it because Isaac would have demanded one also and we’re not convinced that he is ready. It is in the works for her birthday in September now.

As well as growing inches and seeming to get very big in her manner, Amy’s joints have gotten bendier and I’m having to relocate her ribs more often than I would like. She complains a bit of leg pain and we’re managing that with massage, heat and panadol as necessary. She is very hypermobile and I worry about her. We’re aiming to start swimming with her in the New Year, in order to help her build some muscle tone.

Isaac went through a tough phase for a few months. We had near daily meltdowns and his stimming got worse. He stopped eating anything except warm milk and dry cereal and ended up hospitalised for a flu that knocked him for six. But we’ve come out of the other side of that phase now and he is talking more and has also grown inches! In hindsight, the tough patch was a large developmental leap and I am loving watching him chatter with Amy and learn new things like a sponge. He is also very electronics focused, which can provide excellent bribery at times, but can also make him scream blue murder.

Toilet training has started, but his various medical and sensory issues make this harder than it should be. Intensive therapy starts in the new year and we’re hopeful that we can get his digestive system functioning in some sort of order by then. If not, we’ll be stomping our feet and demanding referrals to doctors who deal with gut issues and hoping that we can find some answers.

He will be three in three weeks and I cannot fathom where the time has gone. The days are long, but the years are certainly short. I expected that we would have another baby on the way by now, but alas, my body refuses to co-operate.

This is the first Christmas since 2007 that I’ve not felt the spectre of death hanging over us, so I’m trying to make the most of it. I miss Nan terribly, but feel like we can celebrate this year without feeling the wind whistling through the gaping hole that her death left. The terrible thing about death is that it’s so final and nothing can bring them back, or change the reality that death inflicts upon you.

Both children are old enough this year to ease the ache a little, even knowing that the kids won’t remember her, and that she won’t get to see them grow up. That is the hardest bit I suspect.

But like I said, there are good things happening and after the chaos of the weeks surrounding our wedding, it’s nice to find a semblance of peace. The New Year is going to be busy, and I am really looking forward to it. I’ll be starting Clomid in January and hopefully I’ll be able to announce a pregnancy early in the year.

So, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and festive holidays to all of you. Thank you for sticking with me this year and for reading Sleepless Nights and supporting us.

Sometimes, all it takes is a split second.

And snap.

One photo can make up for a multitude of pulled faces.

I keep starting posts and then deleting them, because I keep failing to say what I want to say in the way that I want to say it. Right now, Yo Gabba Gabba is trying to suck my brain out through my ears and I suspect that it is succeeding. If anyone says that TV is not addictive, they’ve obviously not seen a child given thirty minutes of Yo Gabba Gabba and set loose on the world.

I went to see a Psychologist last week, for the first time. I had all of the usual panic attacks about talking to someone and then promptly burst into tears when I tried to give her the run down of why my brain is all fucked up and dripping out of my ears. I cried, a lot. But only the annoying kind of crying, that makes your eyes leak and your nose run, without making you feel better about things afterwards. Shame, I could have done with some feeling better.

It wasn’t a bad appointment, completely the opposite in fact. I didn’t get the feeling that I was going to be dumped at the first chance (something that 99% of medical professionals have had in common so far) and I talked and walked out wondering if this might actually help. I suspect it will.

**

Amy has been scatty lately. Scatty being the best word to describe it. Scatty, distracted, vaguely reminiscent of a bouncy ball thrown into a cube and shaken vigorously. I feel like I’m speaking to a brick wall every time I talk to her, the words are just echoing right back at me and nothing is being absorbed. There are only so many times that you can tell a child to stop bouncing on the freaking furniture and GO OUTSIDE before your head starts to hurt.

And it’s not just the furniture bouncing; it’s the screaming that I’m ruining her life when I refuse 24/7 TV, and the refusal to listen to anything I say, the disobedience, the not giving a fuck about anyone else, the hitting, the pushing, everything.

***

Some children are just MORE.

They’re louder, grumpier, closer to the surface. They’re more unregulated, more sensory seeking, more likely to fight you every step of the way. They’re more defiant, more likely to make you look like that arsehole parent whisper yelling in the supermarket so help me god you stop touching that right NOW.

They’re the ones whose parents have grey hair and haggard expressions, finding themselves clinging to the thought of bedtime like a saviour, even when bedtime is no barrier to escapades.

They’re the kind of children who make the best kind of adults; stubborn and idealistic, refusing to give in to the system and being defiantly brilliant in the face of all odds.

We just have to hang on with our fingernails and concentrate on getting them to adulthood, where all of these traits are considered positive.

My fingernails are not long enough for this. I might do better holding on by the skin of my teeth.

(but teeth don’t have skin. shut the fuck up.)

****

I know that this will be okay. I’m sure in years to come I will read back over these blog posts and either laugh at myself, or send myself into a state of panic and PTSD.
I guess I won’t know until I come through to the other side; that side where everything is okay and eccentricity doesn’t leave me tearing my hair out.

Until then though, my head hurts.

Amy was talking to me when I stood up from the computer and walked to the bathroom.

“Are you going to make my sandwich now?”

“What? You just had dinner. No, I’m going to run a bath.”

“Oh.” she said, disappointed. “But we don’t need a bath.”

Isaac overheard the conversation and ran away shouting:

“YOU NOT WASH MY HAIR, YOU NOT WASH MY HAIR.”

Apparently smelling like urine and being covered in stickiness is not a good enough reason to get your head wet. I sniffed his head and finding it smelling vaguely like sour milk, decided that it could probably do with a bucket of warm water thrown through it.

I started the bath running and spread a piece of bread with jam for Amy. Isaac ran in and out, throwing toys in the bath, while Amy disappeared outside.

Isaac divested himself of a dirty nappy, before sitting down on the carpet to get his bum wiped. I thanked my lucky stars that the carpet is a grotty grey colour and not white.

Convincing the children to get in the bath was easy. Convincing them to stay in the bath long enough to soak the dirt out of their feet was harder.

Kids are weird. I love soaking in the bath and being clean. My two seem to want to hold onto their dirt and stench like a protective covering. I know that dirt is good for kids, but seriously, it’s only good for camoflauge when you’re outside playing, not when you’re laying on the couch watching TV.

Later, after the kids were out of the bath and I had decided that hair washing wasn’t worth the screaming, I filled up the jug to water my seedlings. Isaac saw me and freaked out.

“YOU NOT GET MY HAIR WET, YOU NOT GET MY HAIR WET!”

He ran away screaming and stimming. I watered the plants and followed him, to see if he wanted to water the plants too – normally a job he loves. He lost his shit. Big time. Screaming and fighting, stimming and hitting. He had seen a jug of water and nothing could make him believe that it wasn’t going to be poured on his head, despite the fact that I was calmly sitting in the middle of his bed, trying to show him that I wasn’t going to wet his hair.

This is how bathtime ends.

Thirty minutes later he is still randomly shouting “YOU NOT WASH MY HAIR” and stimming.

**

My head is still all messed up and black and I started therapy, which I think is going to be good.

The psychologist is lovely in any case and maybe we’ll be able to get some knots untangled. I’m still avoiding the Internet a lot of the time, and instead of tweeting, I am trying to take the small bits of life and be in the moment, rather than constantly inside my own head.

That’s the hard part.

I am still so very far from okay, but I’m trusting to the fact that things will get different, eventually.

And in good news, the app company refunded Amy’s $99 purchase! Woo for Four Pixels, whose liason person obviously has children of their own.

I awoke this morning to find things in my house moved. Not an unusual experience, normally Nathan comes to bed after me, but these were things like hidden lollipop packets and my Acer tablet. The fridge was mostly untouched and when I didn’t find ice-cream smeared all over the bathroom floor, I didn’t think much more of it.

When I went to wake Amy up however, the evidence was clear and it was pointing right at her. A roll-up wrapper stuck to her back, a lollipop stick in her hair and a refusal to wake up. She had obviously been on a sugar bender at some time while the household slept, coupling her sugar consumption with playing games on my tablet.

It has been a while since we knew for certain that Amy was waking up overnight and getting into mischief and it’s possible that we had become a little lax with things like locks on cupboards and leaving electronic devices on any surface under 7ft high.

Because last night was a school night, I was even more lax. What is the point of locking everything and putting all of my things up high when I’m the last one to bed and the first one awake?

Lesson learned.

In the scheme of things, a sugar bender is not that big a deal, when I look at the fact that she could have done so much more and didn’t. There was no painting done, no spilled sugar, there wasn’t cocoa everywhere and there wasn’t any blood that I could see.

Then I checked my gmail.

And discovered that at some point around 4am, Amy had purchased an in-game upgrade, to the tune of $99. On a game that I didn’t even realise HAD upgrades (note to self: do more research on games).

See, Androids are not like iPhones that require a password with every single purchase. No, apparently you can just press something random and click okay and BANG, giant bill.

Sigh.

I couldn’t even get properly grumpy about it, because Amy doesn’t read yet and so had no idea what she had done. Not that she would have understood even if she did read, as her concept of things like money and NOT YOURS and DO NOT TOUCH isn’t exactly well developed. Hence the combination locks on all of the cupboards.

It could have been worse, I’m sure. In fact, I am positively certain it could have been worse.

So, dear Google. Can you please add something to your app market that requires all users to input a password before any sort of monetary purchase is made? PLEASE?

GOD, won’t somebody PLEASE think of the PARENTS?

***

Updated: They refunded my money! Everyone cheer for Four Pixels!