Monthly Archives: August 2010

I can’t believe that Jon Jon is 1 year old and Aiden is 2 and half years old and that I am about to turn 31 years old!! EEeeek.

So that I don’t feel completely old and out of touch Lance got me the new iPhone 4 today.  Basically, I have no idea how to use the thing and Aiden keeps telling me to “put it down mom” as I can’t figure the damn contraption out and I really miss my Nokia E71.  I then realised that if my 2 year old feels more comfortable navigating the Apps on my phone and my 1 year old uses my iPad keyboard as a teething toy then it’s me that needs to get up to speed and quick smart before I get back to work.  I use to count myself as someone who was quite techno savvy.  I even did a media law degree in the late 90s so I thought I was still quite with it.  That was until I got a rude shock the other day when I discovered that people are now using Windows 2007 and I didn’t even know about it.  I have become so distant from technology that I can barely work the automatic camera machines at the photo developing place, and I have no idea how to download music onto my iPod nano or iPod for that matter.  I feel proud of myself that I know how to upload photos to send out on a family email.

What’s happened to me in the last couple of years?  Is it me or is it that technology doesn’t wait for us to have kids and then start evolving again.  I am so petrified of becoming one of those moms who is so glued to the phone and email and camera that I forget to watch or connect with my kids.  Well, if that happens at least I know that I will have become an iPhone 4 expert and I’ll have some great videos of the kids on the beach like I took today to prove it!

I wish I could do this post title justice and write about it properly but my almost 1 year old has just woken up for the second time tonight (AEST 10.52pm) and now my two and a half year old has also just woken up (AEST 11pm) as is the usual nightly habit around here.

Prisoners are often tortured using various methods of sleep deprivation – and now I completely get how this form of torture can prove to be highly effective, and even more so than starvation – having been subjected to both forms of torture myself since having kids!

You’re probably wondering why I don’t get to sleep now instead of going on my blog, well there is really no point in getting settled off to sleep if I’m just going to get woken every hour until it’s finally time to get up for the day to start at around 5.30am!

On any given night, there’s usually someone who wakes up and then we move around the house like stealth assassins so as not to wake the other sleeper in the house. However, sometimes it’s unavoidable and I feel like I operate a nocturnal petting and feeding zoo most nights here.

My skin would look about ten years younger if I had about 7 hours uninterrupted sleep I reckon, and I think my husband and I would be much less cranky if he ad a bit more sleep too. I guess we can always sleep when we’re dead, so there’s no use in complaining about it now!

It’s not that I am ungrateful, I’m just not a massive fan of kids clothes that are emblazoned with great big motifs with glitter and embellishments that scream “Bob the Builder” and “Thomas the Tank Engine” and “Dora the Explorer”.  I just can’t stand these types of clothes, where your kid is practically a walking cartoon wearer, I am just not into that.  My absolute worst is the Wiggles Wardrobe, I just hate it!  A few months a go I took Aiden and Jon Jon to the Wiggles concert so I should have known what to expect. But I was still not prepared for the mass eyesore – whoah tooo much.

So, if you are reading this before Jon Jon’s birthday and you’re not sure what to get him, a sophisticated card will suffice with some touching wording if you please.  Or, if you are really feeling generous, we wont say no to boxed gifts of any size, or please remit payment forthwith to Jon’s Bank account number xx

Kids and babies parties have become so super-competitive that I have been freaking out about my almost 1 year old’s first birthday party since his first ultrasound!

My main concern is the baking.  I am not the greatest cook as I have said before, and when a cake that I bake flops, it’s almost worst than if I would have failed the bar exams!  When we were babies my mom took a 6 month cake icing and decorating course and made us the most fabulous artisitic cakes ever to grace a birthday party, she made wedding cakes, buzzy bee cakes and I reckon if I would have asked for a Chippendale Cake with real strippers jumping out of it, she could have organised it for me.   Needless to say, I will be overjoyed to churn out a cake that rises in the tip for at least 5 cm and does not resemble roadkill of some sort.

I usually kill myself for these parties and the only ones who will actually be taking any notice are the parents, and not the kids, so who am I kidding here??

For Aiden’s first birthday we had it in a local park.  I killed myself preparing savouries and chips and schlepping all the party decorations and tables to the venue and I was 4 months pregnant too!  Then when we got there, there was another 1 year old’s party on the other side of the park, except they werent going old school – they had hired professional caterers, a massive jumpking castle, acrobats on stilts, you name it.  To my dismay and shame, Aiden’s croud of friends all instinctively started to migrate to the other party at the other end of the park, it was like a Serengeti migration to the better party ofr the last part of the morning, I was mortified and totally disappointed in myself.

SO for Jon Jon’s party I am going to go all out.   I have decided to personally blow up 100 assorted colour balloons and we are having not 1 but 2 pinyadas, and if I have to personally jump out of the cake for effect on the day, I will if that’s what it takes.  He better appreciate what his half dead mother is willing to do to throw the best best first birthday party he’s ever had!

Very seldom does the printed word make my blood boil; However, today I read an article by Jacinta Blyth in the Sun Herald Magazine today (1 August 2010) which made me froth at the mouth and tuck into 3 slabs of chocolate simultaneously; 
reckons that motherhood is a cynch and that our generation is conditioned to complaining and groaning about how hard motherhood is and that we almost enjoy complaining.nbsp; She on the other hand thinks motherhood is a breeze.

She does concede that, admittedly, she has only 1 child – a 9 month old girl, who is a good sleeper and eater, who is healthy and happy in general.There are the basics.Then she admits that she works full-time as a newsreader while her kid is happily in daycare. Now how hard does that sound? From my understanding, this woman finds motherhood easy because she has pretty much opted out of all the hard, unglamorous day-to-day stuff, and she only has 1 kid, who is still a baby and a girl at that!

She shoved her kid in daycare so that she can be primped and primed in hair and makeup and dolled up in joujy designer suits on a daily basis to read the news and then pick up her kid after a day of sipping lattes and working- I’ve been there and I can tell you that even when I worked a full day at a corporate law firm while I was pregnant with my second baby, it was still the most chilled experience compared to my days now looking after the 2-year-old and 11 month old.

So, in theory, this Jacinta has not even had a taste of motherhood at full throttle, and she has no basis on which to posit her view that the rest of us all complain unnecessarily. And for the record, I don’t complain, I vent. Online. Not in public. It’s cheaper than therapy, far more convenient and the therapeutic benefits are endless!

More about this soon…I am presently seeking permission to reproduce excerpts of the article to evidence its absurdity!