oh joy…

Our house was sold today. We had big hopes that an investor would buy it and we could continue to rent it. No such luck. This house has been awesome to us. The location is amazing and it’s by far the nicest house we’ve lived in. Squeak was conceived in this house. And now we’ve got 60 days in a very tight market to get out! Finding a house is hard enough…lesbians with 2 cats, a dog, a baby and a single income…I’m worried.

There better be some serious silver lining in all of this.

8 weeks and bushfires…

One day I’ll write a coherent post…with themes and continuity. Not today though.

8 weeks ago, after an almost 8 hour labour, our son was 8 hours old. Today it’s hard to imagine our world without him in it. At present, he is fast asleep in bed with Ducks and you’ve never seen anything cuter.

I like 8 weeks more than I liked 6 weeks. I’m not feeling as overwhelmed. I’m finding my feet and managing to get [some] stuff done. Hell, I’ve even worked out how to have a shower, do my hair AND get dressed while the boy is awake and happy. Ducks and I are learning to communicate and thus parent a whole lot better as a team. He still treats us kindly is going to bed earlier most nights and only waking once for a feed. Plus, I’m starting to really get my mama social life together and it REALLY helps.

I took the boy into work this week and actually considered the possibility that I might like to go back after my 12 months leave. Something has shifted because in November, I never would have entertained such a thought. For all my complaining and tears about work, I now see some of the good stuff. For that hour I was in the office, it felt good to talk about work projects and sector goings on. Of course, there’s all kinds of other things to consider…like our next babe and me going back to uni and maybe I want to do midwifery, not naturopathy….but I’ll think about that another day.

Meanwhile, Squeak’s 8th week has been something of a trip which he has fared incredibly well. There has been a lot of stress and anxiety in his life but he’s cruised through…It seems that the whole world knows about the horrific bushfires we’ve been weathering here. Ducks parents and many of our friends and acquaintances have been caught up in the drama. We know people who have lost their homes, people who are missing and sadly, people who have died. After being trapped by closed roads and fires for 3 days, Duck’s folks were finally evacuated – tired, shocked and traumatised – but luckier than those for whom leaving was never an option. There have been a couple of close calls but it looks like their home is going to be ok – coming out of this mess with a fair amount of smoke damage but with all walls still standing.

I don’t believe in hell, but if I did, it would would look like Victoria did this week. Everyone has been touched by this tragedy, that we had a couple of near misses and couldn’t go to the Rainbow Families picnic makes us some of the lucky ones.

the shine

I was not the mother I want to be today. In fact, I was not a good mother at all today. Poor little Squeak is going through something (developmental? growth?) and unless extremely engaged, fussed and cried for most of the day. I was feeling particularly tired and not at all patient. What resulted was lazy parenting and me leaning way too much on Ducks who was working from home today.

My mum suggested that I may be starting to comprehend the absolute enormity and the challenge of mothering now Squeak is 6 weeks and the shine has worn off a bit. She’s right. I knew there’d be days that I feel like this, but now that I’m in this place, I really don’t like it. Motherhood really is this incredible whirlwind of joy and boredom and exhaustion and bliss. Thank the stars that through it all, the love is constant ‘cos without it, I don’t know how I could do this day in, day out.

I cannot believe that so many women do this everyday and multiple times over without credit, without accolade and without complaining. Women really are amazing.

6 weeks

The boy is 6 weeks and 2 days today.

At 6 weeks, this is what we know about him:

• He’s huge. Off the chart for weight and in the 95th percentile for height. His head, fortunately is in the 75th percentile. Frankly, I think if were any bigger, he’d look like some kind of alien. The stats as of yesterday – 6155 grams, 60cm long, 41cm head circumference.
• He’s wearing 00 or 3-6mth clothes.
• He’s strong. He’s been doing push ups tonight.
• He smiles. We’re not always sure what at and there seem to be quite a few private jokes, but his smile, for whatever reason, makes it all worthwhile.
• He loves the boob. Sometimes, tonight for example, he gets a bit nuts about sucking and forgets to go to sleep.
• He likes melodic, girls with guitar type music. Perhaps he’s a lesbian? He finally fell asleep tonight to the sweet sounds of Ane Brun.
• He can pick my voice out from anywhere. If Ducks is trying to comfort him and I walk into the room and say something, she has no hope.
• He loves being worn.  The more time he spends in the sling or the hug-a-bub, the sweeter he is and the better he sleeps at night.
• He’s not such a fan of his pram unless we are in a super busy/noisy area where there’s lots of stimulation to distract him.
• He’s a good sleeper. His pattern overnight at the moment is 5 or 6hrs-feed-3hrs-feed-3hrs- wake for the day. I feel like we’ve got a pretty sweet deal.
• He’s willful. He sleeps well overnight, but some nights (like tonight) it can take us 3 hours to get a clearly tired boy down.
• He loves to be sung to. The more repetitive the better which is lucky because our repertoire doesn’t extend much beyond twinke twinke little star and row-row-row your boat.
• He has an uncanny ability to get fussy or wake up the minute my dinner is ready, my coffee has arrived or my toast has popped up.
• He likes battery operated, tinny sounding parenting aides! His vibrating, singing bouncer, given to him by his great aunt, was not very popular with his mothers until they realised it afforded them the time to eat their breakfast AND brush their teeth.
• He has two mothers and a whole bunch of others who think he’s the cutest thing ever and who love him very much.

Loads more pics on flickr. (toolbar on the right)