Category: Life

My son wakes from his nap. I can hear him in his cot, gooing and giggling at himself. I creep up the hallway to see whether he is likely to go back to sleep, but he hears me instead. I can see him wiggling and smiling, just waiting for me to come and get him. I pick him up and kiss the softness of his exposed skin, he doubles himself up into a ball and laughs, long and loud.

Smiling, I carry him out into the lounge room and lay him down on the floor. A moment later, I lay down too. I kiss his stomach while he laughs at me and we roll around and around, playing and laughing. He loses interest and starts to climb up against the couch, standing on his two feet. Racing to grab the camera, an idea for a blog post pops into my head ‘Mobility in pictures’.

Setting up the camera, I snap a test shot or two before Isaac notices me. He drops to all fours and crawls towards the camera. Slowly I crawl backwards, however it’s been a long time since I crawled and my son, he is much faster than I am. Giggling madly he catches me and I have to hide the camera as he tries to eat it.

I distract him, trying to get him to stand up so I can photograph it. He obliges, just as the camera goes dead.

Flat battery.

As Isaac hauls himself to standing again and looks around for his praise, I’m rummaging through my handbag, looking for the spare battery I know is in there. Successful, I snap it into the camera and turn it on.

Nothing.

I suspect this battery is dodgy, seeing as how it was in the camera that got a bath.

Sighing, I give up on the idea of a photo blog and instead find the battery chargers so that I can take photos tomorrow.

I sit down to write and Isaac spots me, crawling up to stand at my knee and whine while I write. After he bites my knee for the second time, I give up (again) on the idea of getting any work done. Soggy knee’d, I lay back down to play.

My children clamber all over me while I write blog posts and chapters of books in my head. Sadly, I can’t magically transport the words from my head to my computer and so later, when they’re sleeping, I will have to transcribe them.

But for now, we’re playing on the floor.

Dear lady in the blue top eating lunch at Eastlands today.

Hi. I was sitting just behind you with my partner and our baby. I don’t even think you noticed me, you were interested in eating your lunch and talking with your friend. I’m thankful for that, truly I am.

I was eating my lunch and sharing bits with my wiggly son. Eventually he cracked the shits with his stroller and started throwing food around. So I did what anyone would do in my situation, I gave up on solid food and breastfed him instead. He must have been thirsty, as he wiggled and snuffled and drank like a parched baby.

This is where you came in.

You see, when my son decided he was finished with his feed, he grabbed my breast and ripped it out of his mouth, giving it a squeeze for good measure. I had no control over this mind you, I didn’t make him do it.

In the middle of him giving my breast a good squeeze, I may possibly have shot a single line of milk in an arc. I watched, horrified, as it landed on your back. I could almost see the line where it hit.

So, dear lady in the blue shirt, I’m really really sorry. I didn’t mean to squirt you with breastmilk and I would have apologised if I thought you’d realised. As it was, some things are probably better left unknown.

But if you so happen to be one of my blog readers (unlikely, but it could happen) please accept my sincere apologies. You didn’t need a milk bath. I didn’t need to watch it arc across the food court, hoping like fuck no one else saw. It seems I was safe and the only one who noticed.

I still feel bad though.

Regards,

The lady in the grey shirt, sitting behind you with the wiggly baby.

***

In other news, the 2009 Weblog award nominations are open. Go over and nominate your favourite blogs in their categories and nominate yourself while you’re there.

And, if you’re so interested, I did an interview over at Murray Newlands’ blog. You can find it here.

Just oh dear.

He pulled up on the couch for the first time a few days ago. It was a wobbly start with plenty of falls. Today though, he has his feet sorted and he is upright and standing at every opportunity. Even if the only thing to pull up on is my hair, he is managing it.

He’s still so tiny! He’s meant to be my baby, not my upright mobile toddler.

Shit.

***

Update: In other news, remember that ChupaChup challenge I did a few weeks back? I would love it if you could head over HERE and give me a thumbs up? (It’s a facebook photo). In case the link decides to stop working (Facebooks permalinks are really odd) mine is the photo with Barbie in it.

Please?

Today I went out to lunch with Mum, a day before my birthday. We went for sushi MINUS the children and oh, it was lovely.

Why, you might ask, didn’t we go out tomorrow on my actual birthday? Well tomorrow (today by the time I finish typing this, as it’s 11.53pm and Amy has just woken again) I reserve for sleeping in late (if I make it to 9am, I’ll be pleased), eating cheese and biscuits (well, rice crackers, but whatever), demanding foot rubs at every opportunity and generally overusing parentheses.

I’m going to be spending tomorrow doing not a lot of anything.

Except maybe playing with my new 50mm lens that was my birthday present from Mum. Yay!

Anyway, I had a lovely day.

Right up until Mum dropped me back off at Nathan’s parent’s house, where Nathan and the children were camping out and we tried to head home.

The car started perfectly at their house. Truly it did.

Then Nathan noticed that our speedo wasn’t working. Suddenly we’d lost 1st gear and the car was feeling sick. 5 minutes out, we’d pulled over to baby the car back to health. Nathan added more transmission fluid (which we’d only topped up the other day), more coolant, more everything.

The universe had other ideas though and suddenly we went from a car that was sick, but running, to a car that wouldn’t start.

Did I mention we were in a tiny little car park, having pulled off the highway?

Heh.

Anyway, the calvalry came and rescued us, to the tune of Mum coming to collect us and Nathan’s brother showing up to help Nathan get the car running again. The kids and I followed Nathan home in Mum’s car and nothing untoward happened. Needless to say, it was a stressful way to end the day, but ah well. We’re home now and I’ve got a car I can kick when I get frustrated because the stupid fucking  thing is broken and needs more money than it’s worth to fix it. Sigh.

Sigh. Again.

BUT! Today I turn 21! I suppose I’m officially allowed to get drunk in the US and other assorted countries, despite my own letting me drink 3 years ago. (We won’t talk about all the underage drinking I did while I was working, ahem)

And to celebrate, I thought I’d share some photos I took today.

Because I’m 21 now and I can. So there.

Shush. I may possibly have been enjoying snapping photos of the food. Not with the 50mm though, that was bought after we had lunch. I’m already craving more sushi.

Oh yes. And how the day ended:

I rang poison control today. Yes, it finally happened, I had to ring them. Amy took the lid off a spray bottle filled with pine-o-clean and eucalyptus oil and used the straw part (you know, the part that actually sucks up the liquid so it can be squirted? yes, that part) as a straw to drink her milk.

The cup smelled like pine-o-clean, the straw smelled like pine-o-clean and her breath smelled like, you guessed it, pine-o-clean.

Sigh.

We were given instructions on what to watch for and what to expect, but basically, if your toddler ingests a mouthful or two of pine-o-clean, you’re not going to have to race to emergency in an ambulance.

(For the record, we were told to watch for breathing difficulties, excessive hyperactivity or excessive lethargy. They mentioned she might also vomit, but not to worry too much unless she couldn’t stop vomiting)

So far, she hasn’t even complained of a tummy ache.

Seems that for Amy, actual cleaning poison is less like poison than gluten.

Heh.