Life

This morning I woke up and despite it being a Sunday, I promptly jumped on my partner and sent him to the shop for the newspaper. You see, it’s not every day your blog is mentioned in print and I was a touch excited.

My excitement has, unfortunately, rubbed off on the children, who are alternately bouncing around me, or screeching at me, needing things and whining. Joy.

So!

Hello to any mothers wandering in from the EGuide liftout in the Sunday Tasmanian this morning. I was thrilled when Rebecca emailed me and let me know she was planning on doing an article on Mums who blog. In fact, I may have skipped around the house for the rest of the week.

Anyway, feel free to have a look around, to the right are the archives, for everything I’ve ever written (Warning: it’s a lot of writing), and you can also find my search form, if you’re hoping I’ve written about anything in particular. Up the top on the tabs is my about page and other bits and pieces.

And down the very bottom, is a comment form, where you can leave a comment and say hello!

There is also an orange button you can click on to Subscribe, or you can enter your email address into the form below it to have my posts delivered by email.

Click on the photo to enlarge the article so you can read it yourself (you may have to click again, after the photo comes up to maximise the image).

The other bloggers mentioned are Bad Mommy Moments, Dooce, Three Ring Circus, Life and Love in the Petri Dish, Julia {here be hippogriffs}, Misc Mum, Mommy is Moody and finally, A little pregnant.

Some of my favourite blogs are there!

(See? I’ve made it easy for you, linking everyone else.)

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Suicide hour: That hour as you’re busy cooking dinner, the children are hungry and tired and no one seems able to do anything on their own without help.

It normally involves frequent whining, a couple of tantrums and an urge to throw yourself off a bridge. Or time out everybody while you finish cooking. Or time out yourself and let everyone else fend for themselves.

Also known as Arsenic Hour, The Witching Hour and Please Everyone, Just Go Away and Let Me Cook Dinner Alone Hour.

****

Both children are at my feet, screaming at me. Amy is tugging on my top, asking for a glass of milk and Isaac is wailing at my feet, clutching my pant leg.

It’s dinnertime and I just had to hop into the lounge room to settle a dispute.

Amy, no, you play with this toy. That one is Isaac’s. Isaac, here you go.

Unfortunately, my presence has alerted him to the fact that he is hungry and tired. He clutches me, wailing, while I try to make it back to the kitchen. I can smell things starting to burn.

Isaac! I grump – Sit here! Right, now play with your toys.

Amy! Give him BACK his bottle. You’re a big girl, you don’t need a bottle.

But I neeeeda bottle, she wails.

No, you don’t.

I make it to the kitchen before the wailing begins again. My head is going to explode, I can feel it. Glancing at the clock I mentally count minutes until I can feed everyone and start putting them to bed.

Nathan makes his way to the lounge room, ostensibly to give me a hand. Neither of the children want Daddy though, and they remain at the kitchen gate, wailing for me. My stress levels rise as I run the stick blender through the pasta sauce and drain pasta. I only just caught it in time, gluten free pasta won’t stand for overcooking. I’m pretty sure no one wanted to eat pasta mush with their tomato sauce.

I start dishing up as the wails get louder. I’m getting frustrated now, how hard is it to entertain the baby for 5 minutes while I dish up dinner? Amy screams about an imagined slight and I have to remind myself to breathe deep and ignore it for now.

I mentally take myself to my happy place, only somehow, my happy place has been infiltrated by tiny short screaming people and it’s looking less like a happy place and more like hell with every passing moment.

The house has been trashed in just one short hour. Toys are everywhere and I’m fairly sure I just fractured something as I dodged a thrown baby bottle and stubbed my toe on the cupboard.

I manage to keep the swearing to an under my breath mutter and slowly, I get the pasta dished up and sauce allocated.

The baby sits on the floor, pasta and cheese in a bowl in front of him. He spreads it out in a giant circle around him before starting to eat. I ignore it, wishing, yet again that he would submit to the highchair.

Amy sits at the table for 2 mouthfuls before needing a glass of water/the potty/to bother her brother. Still trying to grate cheese over my own dinner, I get her fixed and heading back to the table.

It’s a useless effort of course, because as soon as I sit down, my dinner becomes The Most Interesting and Tasty and both children end up sitting at my feet, begging for mouthfuls of now gone cold pasta.

Sighing, I give up on getting to eat unbothered and share my dinner, wishing I could get away with hiding in the bathroom to eat.

Slowly we finish my dinner and I start to get the mess Isaac made cleaned up. My favourite method of cleaning just involves letting the cats inside, but as Isaac still looks hungry, I pick up the pasta from the tablecloth he was sitting on and pop it back into his bowl. He, of course, spreads it back out in a circle again.

I give up.

As I head to the kitchen to dump the plates and open the door for the cats, Isaac notices Daddy. He’s eating dinner relatively unphased  by the circus surrounding him. Isaac hauls himself to standing and stays there, holding onto Nathan’s legs with his mouth open like a baby bird. Amy notices and climbs up, to sit next to her father as well.

Reluctantly, he shares out his dinner as well, even as his eyes plead with me to rescue him. I look at him, trying to keep a straight face, but I can’t.

Please? He says.

Sorry honey, I’ve uh, got to go outside and uh, do something.

Smiling now, I disappear outside for 5 minutes to get my head back together before the bedtime circus begins.

God knows I need to after all that.

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It’s bedtime.

However, I still have one child sitting at my feet eating steamed carrots and the other child, well she is laying in bed, screeching her demands. It’s a good thing she doesn’t have any hostages in there, as the situation is escalating.

I NEEEEED an APPPLE!

No. You don’t. It’s bedtime.

I walk away again, before the next demand comes.

MUMMMEEEE! I lost my DRINK!

Back down the hallway I go, to point out to her that her drink is still next to her pillow.

But I need cordial and water!

Not for bedtime. For bedtime you get water.

OOOOOOH.

And the meltdown begins. Again.

I can hear her now, demands silenced in the face of my No. Go to sleep. attitude, playing with the toys. It’s meant to be bedtime, but Amy is Three! and Three! doesn’t cave to the demands of sleep and how your body is tired. Not tonight.

Isaac is crawling around, a late nap in the car has stuffed his bedtime up. As much as he enjoys playing, for him, it’s suicide hour and I’m not sure if my legs will survive anymore biting. We won’t talk about my nipples.

I chase him around the lounge room, trying to change his bum. The little bugger is getting faster and he giggles as I pin him down. Until he realises that I am putting a nappy back on him and then he fights me, like I’m trying to murder him.

Stop that! You need a nappy on.

AIEIEIEIIEEEE.

He twists and turns and it’s like wrestling an octopus.

An octopus that someone has covered in oil.

He’s faster, but I’m bigger and stronger and I confuse him with kisses for the 10 seconds it takes to get the nappy done up.

Exhausted, I let him run away to play.

It’s almost his bedtime, and today, almost mine as well.

I love my children, so very much. But my favourite part of the day? That comes when they’re both tucked up in bed, asleep and I can breathe again, without any short and loud people throwing themselves at my front in a huff.

I like the evenings.

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I started this blog in August 2007, when Amy was almost 1. I was lonely, living in the middle of nowhere, with no adult conversation.

I am positive that blogging saved my sanity, more than once.

This little space, it’s been my safe haven. My place to hide, a dumping ground, somewhere to write out my thoughts and stresses, deal with them and move on.

When I started, I had no readers, except my mother. For months, no one was reading here, until I participated in NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month). I picked up a few readers over the course of that month (Hi Marylin!) and slowly, my readership grew.

Blogging is fluid. I’ve gained readers and I’ve lost readers and 2 years later, aside from my regular commenters, I have no idea who reads here anymore. I’ve got less time to comment now, although I’ve probably got more blogs in my reader. Nowadays I tweet as much as I blog and I enjoy every second of it, even if the social media moguls are sure that I’m ‘doing it wrong.’

It’s funny, I still check my Feedburner numbers most nights to see how many subscribers I have (in the scheme of things, not very many) and I will check my stats and referrals to see where people are coming from, at least once a day. Some things never change, and my obsession with stats is one of them.

I think, after all this time that things are starting to fall into place for me.

I’m a little late I know, but today is Delurk Your Lurkers day and I would LOVE to know who is reading here and a little more about them.

Who is your favourite blogger (while I’ll be thrilled if you say me, I know that it’s not true across the board, so be honest) and who was your first blog read?

My first reads were Lotus when she was still on Myspace (Gasp! I know!). Once I’d moved away from Myspace and convinced her to come too (aren’t you glad I did?) I found MiscMum and promptly lurked all over her blog roll.

And 2 years later, here we are.

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