Laughter

We all need it. Sometimes we really, REALLY need it. I needed it this week. The past few days have been, well... awful. Some pretty horrible stuff has been going down. Anyway, WE WILL ALL BE OK. Which is why it's definitely not as bad as all that, you know? And last night, I took a little break from it all. A friend and I went out to see Three Stuffed Mums, as part of the Melbourne Comedy Festival. There's nothing quite like a good belly-laugh with The Sisterhood, as we bond over those toddler Abs of Steel that appear when you're trying to wrestle them into a pram or car seat; or the fact that the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end when walking past a teenager's room because of all the static generated by their numerous electrical devices (not to mention the funky smell); or the sad reality that after performing the miracle of pregnancy, childbirth and often breastfeeding, most of our body parts now seem to want to head south.

I'm really grateful to these funny mums for comping me the tickets because not only was the show a great laugh and very close to home, it was also such a treat just to get out at night! It's so rare that I do, I'm always mildly surprised to see everyone else out and about and enjoying the evening, just as though it's a normal thing to do. I keep forgetting. This novelty was so profound that it wasn't even ruined by the fact that after getting all dressed up (read: put on lippy, swap flip-flops for heels and unearth a jacket without have spit-up on it), I couldn't find my umbrella so I had to walk down the street carrying Madeleine's miniature, multicoloured and spotty number to keep off the rain.

If you want to go see these mums and laugh along with them (and me), you can get your tickets here.

(Photo is an old one of me with two of my dearest girlfriends. It makes me so happy to look at this.)

The calm

Today my children and I went for a walk in the park. That is all it was. No drama, no grand and creative ideas. No picnics no bubbles no balls no pigeon-chasing. Harry was awake, but not crying. He wasn't doing his usual laughing, either. He relaxed in his pram, blue eyes looking into grey sky - and sometimes across at me - taking it all in. Madeleine held my hand the entire time. No running off and asking to be chased, or pretending to be a dog, not even twirling. She just wanted to walk beside me, hand in hand, while we looked at the park. So that's what we did. When we came to a fountain I crouched beside her to point out its features (highly educational comments, like "Can you see the mer-people holding up that heavy platform?" and "Oh look, those children are nudie-rudy just like you in the bath"). Madeleine squatted beside me and gave the fountain her full attention, rolling her eyes and saying "Oh Mummy" at that last comment.

Harry watched the wind flirt with the still-green trees and said nothing.

We walked around the duck pond. At each new fountain, Madeleine pulled hard on my hand until we both crouched again and pondered the inscrutableness of sculptural water. Ducks traced water-lines through fallen leaves on the still pond, and it would all have felt very Zen if it wasn't for the soundtrack of an excited "Quack! Quack!" coming from the toddler attached to my left hand.

Harry watched three seagulls circle a fig tree and said nothing.

We stayed an hour in that park, just looking at fountains, looking at ducks, looking at seagulls, looking at trees. When I put Madeleine back into the pram and headed across the road into Gertrude Street, it was as though a spell had broken. The silence of our still and simple walk was torn apart. Madeleine began to grizzle. "Nom nom?" she asked, which was fair enough as it was well past her usual lunch time. Harry stopped watching the sky and fell asleep. We turned towards home.

These days

  These autumn days are wild and windswept.

One moment they are humid and heavy, ripe with old summer gone to seed. Sun-hats and sunscreen and sweaty sheets, kicked off in the night. The next, the air turns cold and these days tumble into thoughts of green apples and roast vegetables. Hot chocolate under blankets, pink rain-boots, and waiting for the leaves to fall.

These days are 10 chubby fingers and 10 chubby toes, waving in the air. New words learned every day; brothers and sisters holding hands; and twirling: joyful, exuberant twirling.

Long hours these days are passed with kisses and big, beautiful smiles. Raspberries blown into fat-creases on perfect little thighs.

Small fingers softly exploring my face.

They are fevers and 'flus; mountains of tissues; long cuddles through sad nights.

These days are taking those first, glorious steps outside into the autumn air, when everyone is finally starting to feel better and the four walls of our house have drawn uncomfortably close: freedom at last. Cafes and coffees, exploring old streets and new, a row of rainbow-hued watering-cans.

All too much excitement for some.

Joyful, joyful

(Alt. title: THE BEST FLASHMOB YOU WILL EVER SEE OR HEAR) How was your weekend, friends? Mine was pretty average, to be honest. I am happy it's over and ready to start the week fresh.

There were some good parts, especially catching up with some lovely friends who dropped by on Saturday afternoon. But mostly, it was taken up with sleep deprivation and taking care of an increasingly-sick little girl, culminating in a visit to the hospital in the early hours of Sunday morning. She will be ok, but right now she is SO sick and SO miserable. Poor little Harry has been incredibly patient and sweet. I am just praying that by some miracle he won't catch whatever Madeleine has.

On Sunday night over a late dinner with both kids finally asleep in their beds, I looked across at Mr B and the bags under his eyes just about reached the table, as did mine. I felt a surge of love for him. You have never met a man who works as hard as this man. He is phenomenally dedicated to his job, which by the way happens to be a job that helps thousands of hospital patients every year get the care and treatments they desperately need. At the same time, he is also phenomenally dedicated to his family, so we get all his love and all his loyalty and incredible levels of self-sacrifice. There isn't much left for him after all that, and the exhaustion of these past few months with two children so very young has taken its toll on his health. He seems to be catching every little thing lately, just like Madeleine. We had both been awake since 2am that morning and, at at 4am when Madeleine's fever still wouldn't come down despite taking both Panadol and Nurofen, he'd taken her off to the Children's Hospital. After they returned, he spent most of the day with a sweaty, vomit-smelling, unhappy little girl asleep on his chest. Then after dinner he made the two of us the famous Bulger Family Chocolate Pudding as a treat. All of this was despite the towering piles of work he had intended to do on the weekend, meaning the alarm went off at 5am today. Again. And it will probably continue for the rest of the week. I really need to think of some nice things to do for him.

Anyway, while nursing Harry in the midst of all this blah on Sunday afternoon, I saw this video on a friend's Facebook profile (thanks Matt!) and, call it exhaustion or whatever, it brought tears to my eyes. It was a little moment of happiness and goosebumps in my sad and sickly weekend, so I thought I'd share it with you, too. I hope it makes your Monday joyful!

And now for the video:

In the kitchen

Mummy-blogger creates amazing recipe for cake that she cooks with angelic children in pristine kitchen. Cake tastes like extra-rich mud cake but is actually made from organic beetroot, powdered kale and sun-dried goji berries. No sugar or gluten in sight. Mummy-blogger and aforementioned angelic children cover cake in silky-smooth icing, then use tweezers to artfully place edible flowers all over, creating culinary masterpiece. Only, not in my house. I won't be winning any Mother of the Year awards for healthy toddler foods (or clean kitchens), but Madeleine, Harry and I have been having a ball flexing our baking muscles of late.

Madeleine is going through an "I can do it myself" phase, which is frequently excruciating to watch but also so sweet, seeing her confidence and independence burgeon. Also, Harry is a most appreciative sous-chef, grinning and gurgling and kicking his little feet with gusto from his front-row seat on the kitchen floor.

Lately Mr B has been working a lot of nights, meaning Madeleine is in bed before he gets home. She is really missing him. Everything right now is about Daddy. I convince her to eat her vegetables each night by shaping them into a face on her plate and calling it "Daddy." I talk her into wearing pants on a cold day (when she would much rather wear a tutu) by telling her, "These are Daddy's favourite pants."

When we baked chocolate cupcakes last week, they were "for Daddy." When I told her in the morning how Daddy had gobbled his cupcake up when he got home, and that he said it was delicious, she radiated pride. "YEAH!" she yelled, balling her chubby little fingers into fists and punching the air.

Then yesterday, we made sugar biscuits "for Daddy." She was so excited, and determined to do it all herself. Madeleine mixed the dough, rolled it, pressed out the shapes, made the icing, chose the colour, decorated the biscuits. Harry was helpful, too. He laughed and said "Hoo" a lot.

I texted Mr B a picture of Madeleine decorating the biscuits and told him she was making them for him.

Then at around 6.30 that night, just as she was finishing her dinner and finally about to have one of her biscuits for dessert, Daddy walked through the door. He'd seen my text and thought, "That's it." He packed up a whole lot of work to do from home at night, and hurried back here to surprise her before she got into bed.

I pulled out our best floral china, and Madeleine and Daddy had a tea party with the biscuits she had made all by herself.

Melbourne dispatch - Brunswick art crawl

Motherhood can be isolating. Your heart expands beyond anything you could have imagined possible but, at the same time, your world contracts almost to the four walls of your home. Life, now, is scheduled to military precision around meal times and nap times and baby-or-toddler-safe activities. If like me you also work at home, and if you're new to your city, that can make for pretty lonely days. And culture? The arts? I am the mother of a 20 month old girl. Peppa Pig is all the culture I get. A LOT of Peppa Pig. Hours upon hours of Peppa Pig. Soon, I will start dreaming in snorts and giggles and "everybody loves jumping up and down in muddy puddles" (my fellow parents will know what that means). After all, it's not easy to navigate private galleries with prams and energetic toddlers and babies who suddenly need to be breastfed RIGHT NOW. It's much easier to put Peppa Pig on dvd. Again.

Enter Culture Mamas, the brain-child of two mums who get it. All of it. So they arrange pram-friendly, baby-friendly, toddler-friendly events that give us parents an opportunity to enjoy the arts, opening doors that would ordinarily intimidate anyone with milky spit-up on their sleeves and a little bottle of bubble-blowing liquid kept permanently in their purses.

Yesterday, Harry and I joined a handful of other mums and bubs on an art crawl through Brunswick with Culture Mamas, on a tour of public and private galleries, public sculptures, architecture and street art, led by Jane from Art Aficionado Tours. It was an insider's glimpse not only into the artworks themselves, but also into the arts scene in the local community, tossing in a little of the cultural and political history of the area for good measure. We were introduced to artists, agents and curators, who were all happy to talk about the works around them. The walk ended, as all good tours do, with coffee.

The sun shone, the wind cooled the day, my new boots neglected to give me blisters, and my baby behaved like the angel he is. I fell in love with a major work by Turbo Brown that was so far out of my budget it might as well have been a Picasso. But tonight I will dream about black swans and three white chicks and bold blue behind the river-reeds. Which will be a lot better than yet another dream about Peppa Pig.

I won the lottery

Harry has been crying. "What's up little man?" I ask, bending over his cot, and tears instantly transform into an enormous, gummy, open-mouthed smile. "Hoo!" he laughs, "Ahoo!" and I turn my head aside so he can't see me smiling, because it is night-time and all the books say not to engage babies in play during the night, so that they can learn when to sleep.

A frantic scuffling is heard and I turn back around to see Harry now grinning fit to burst, head wiggling from side to side and both legs kicking around like socks in a washing machine. Cotton blankets and muslin wraps are flailing everywhere.

"Now look here, it's 4am," I tell him, though I can't help smiling too. "Ahoo!" Harry responds, never taking his eyes off mine. It is a laugh exactly like his sister's at the same age. I ditch the books and pick him up and cover his dimples with kisses. There is nothing, nothing in this world, like the smell of a baby. They should find a way to bottle it and distribute it and there would be no more war.

"Oh my god," breathes Mr B drowsily from beside me in the bed. We look from Harry to each other and back again, both overcome with wonder. Neither of us can quite believe that we made this chubby, cheeky, loving little boy. It just doesn't seem real that he is ours. That of all the parents in all the world, we and only we get to be his Mummy and Daddy. That the universe has trusted us with the task of loving Harry and protecting Harry and teaching Harry for the rest of our lives.

:  :  :

I am making Madeleine's lunch when she interrupts me and asks to be picked up, little hands reaching, beseeching. I take her into my arms and she rests her head on my shoulder, the way she has done since she was one week old. Then she tilts back until she can look me in the eye. Places a sticky hand on either side of my face and pulls me in for a big, hard, sloppy, on-the-mouth kiss. Then another, and another. Madeleine is kissing me almost fiercely, gripping my ears to make sure I don't get away. As if I would ever want to.

I can't. I can't even. There are no words. What did I do in this life or 100 others that was so good as to earn this reward? To be loved by Madeleine? To be her Mummy? How is that even possible?

:  :  :

Harry is crying again. This time the sun is up and he is wiggling in his rocker in the playroom. He is hungry. But before I get a chance to pick him up and feed him, Madeleine takes control. "Harry!" she cries with glee. She wobbles over and rests her head beside his in the rocker. He stops crying. She stands up and faces him and when their eyes meet, both of them smile at each other. I feel a blast of pure happiness that is almost painful. "Harry! Harry!" Madeleine cries again, and then she twirls and tap-dances around his rocker and around the room, to entertain him. His eyes never leave her.

:  :  :

The house is steeped in rare quiet. Both of my children are asleep upstairs, and so is Mr B. I am alone in the lounge room, reading, and it is surreal and precious and quite beautiful because I am almost never, ever alone these days.

There is a baby monitor in Madeleine's room and it is not emitting a peep. There is another monitor in our room, where Harry sleeps in his cot beside our bed. Through it, I can hear two soft snores in tandem: both Harry and Mr B are dreaming.

A lump forms in my throat and I am so filled with love for these three that it takes me quite by surprise.

I think of all the little things I've been complaining about and dwelling on lately. The kids have both been sick. Mr B has been working a lot of nights, leaving me to handle the dreaded bed-and-bath hour alone. Money is tight, until I can get back to a bit more work. I am tired all the time. Bone tired. An aching, dragging, brain-fog weariness that never lifts. I am approximately three hundred and eighty-four years old. And I look it, too. My body feels like I am pushing through mud just to walk from room to room. I forget almost everything, and confuse the things I do remember. I'm snippy and impatient with Mr B, though he doesn't deserve it.

But on this night, all I can think of is how insanely lucky I am. How those three sleeping upstairs are my FAMILY. I can't quite comprehend how that came to be. This much love. I didn't even think this much love existed.

Absent-mindedly I rub my aching feet, curled under me on the couch. This perfect family, it's like I'm looking in at someone else's life. The realisation that this is MY life and MY family doesn't come easy. I don't feel deserving. Surely someone else would do all this much better than me? I feel like I won the lottery.

Frozen, melted

Here is how we avoided the heat on the weekend. While Harry and Mr B had nanna-naps together in the bedroom under the air conditioner, Madeleine and I headed out on a mama-daughter date to see Frozen at the movies. This was Madeleine's first movie. She is not even 20 months old and I wasn't sure how well she would cope, so I chose seats next to the aisle just in case. But from the opening credits she was mesmerised. Beautiful snowflakes, twinkling over the oh-so-familiar (to me) Disney palace, had her breathing "Wowww." She laughed, she held her breath, she cried "Weeeeee!" as the characters slid down mountains of snow and ice and sailed through the air. When Princess Anna puckered up to receive a kiss from Prince Hans Madeleine made loud kissing noises herself, to hurry them along.

We didn't need our two seats. Madeleine spent the entire movie on my lap, and it was a perfect cuddle. While never taking her eyes off the screen, she would reach back from time to time to stroke my face or hair, or find my hand in the dark and hold it. When the scary snow-monster began roaring, she turned her body around to face me so I could cuddle her tightly, but the draw of the movie was too much. Little hands wrapped tightly around my neck, she insisted on twisting her head back around to continue watching.

As we walked out of the theatre, hand in hand, I asked Madeleine if she had enjoyed the movie. "More?" she asked. "More? More? More?"

It is simple, silly things like this that make my heart swell and make me so happy to be a mother. I absolutely loved my afternoon with my daughter, introducing her to something that for most of us is so ordinary - a movie - yet to her was nothing short of pure magic. I felt a crazy sort of pride walking out of that theatre with Madeleine, a kind of "I'm with her" Entourage moment that had no grounding in logic and was all heart.

When we arrived home, Harry and Mr B were still asleep. We sneaked upstairs and Madeleine jumped on her father and covered him with kisses to wake him up. I picked up Harry, who had woken with a jolt from all the noise, and he gave me his sweet, soft, old-soul grin that never fails to put a lump in my throat. He smelled amazing. I kissed him and kissed him. I could kiss those chubby cheeks forever.

(Oh and the best part? Nobody had told Madeleine about popcorn or choc-tops, so she was content to sit through an entire movie munching on an apple.)

Mother

I came across this post by Alyssa of Kitch Bitsch last week and thought it was just lovely. Following a survey of 40,000 people from 102 non-English speaking countries, "mother" was voted the most beautiful word in the English language*. Isn't that wonderful? Here is a taste of what Alyssa had to say about "mother": The first word we speak. The first person to comfort us. Mother is love. Mother is home.

If mother has intrinsic beauty then why don’t I feel beautiful? I am mother to a son and two daughters. To them I am beautiful; they see what I can’t see. To them I am tickles and cupcakes and morning cuddles, my squishy belly a pillow. My daughters brush my hair and choose a vintage dress for me to wear each morning. They aspire to be like their mother.

It is not hard to see their beauty. They giggle and dance and sing. I stare at their cherubic faces as they lay sleeping. I kiss their velvety skin and breathe them deep into my lungs. They marvel at what their bodies can do, how their legs can run and jump.

They remind me of a time when legs were just legs. Before they were dimpled legs or hairy legs or jiggly legs. Before the lens of judgement. Before the term post baby body was even invented.

::          ::          ::

Every night while I feed Harry, he glances up at me and smiles. I rest him on my knees and he smiles some more. He follows me with his eyes as I move about the room, grinning when I am near and crying when I move out of sight. I calm his sobs by softly stroking his cheek with my finger. I kiss his feet to make him laugh. When I snuggle him to my chest he falls beautifully, adorably asleep, arms akimbo and mouth wide open in a totally trusting snore.

Does Harry think I am beautiful? Without a doubt he does.

When I wear a dress Madeleine wants to wear a dress. When she runs barefoot she wants me to do the same. Madeleine won't wear those cute little hair-clips you can buy for little girls, but she will insist on having bobby-pins in her hair, if I am wearing them too. We brush our hair at the same time, brush our teeth at the same time, and when I put on make-up Madeleine wants some too, so I pretend to make her over. If I make myself a cup of tea, Madeleine runs to get her tea-set and pours me a second cup from her little floral teapot.

Does Madeleine think I am beautiful? Absolutely. And she wants to be just like me.

But if this is the case, why am I so hard on myself? Why do I narrow my eyes and frown at the post-baby-squish I see in the mirror when I take a shower? Or the lines I see around my eyes when I lean in close? Looking down at my hands as I type these words, my skin appears tired and old from constant washing and cleaning and scrubbing and pushing-prams-in-the-sun(ing). And to be honest, "tired and old" is how I feel all over. My hair these days is best described as "bleh." Most of my clothes have holes in them, and spit-up all over them, and they were never stylish to begin with.

Why do these things bother me so much? Madeleine and Harry don't simply not-care about these things, they don't even know that they exist! To Madeleine and Harry I am beautiful, and I am beautiful because of one irrefutable word: mother.

I loved that Alyssa reminded me of this. You can read her whole post here. If you love your mother or if you are a mother (or both), it will warm your heart.

* Other popular words were "passion," "smile" and "eternity," as well as "lollipop," "hiccup" and "banana"

Stuff and nonsense

↑↑ Evidence #657 that we live in a small world: Madeleine went to daycare dressed in this ridiculously cute hotdog-pretzel t-shirt the other day, a gift from one of my best friends in the world. As we were entering, one of the dads also doing the drop-off admired her shirt and said "that's my favourite city," and of course I said "me too." We got talking and it turned out we'd lived in New York at the same time and were practically neighbours (he was in the Lower East Side and I was in SoHo), and he used to manage one of my favourite restaurants, where my friends and I would go all the time. And here we were, half a world and an ENTIRE different lifestyle away, dropping our little girls off to play. ↑↑ I took this photograph on the way back from a coffee run because I saw the leaves on this little tree and thought "WHAAAT? IS IT AUTUMN ALREADY?" And then I realised the leaves weren't turning brown for the season, they had actually burned up during the recent heatwave. Poor tree.

I have been indulging in a little bit of we-can't-catch-a-break feeling sorry for myself dumps lately. On Friday night I had sudden and extreme pains in the chest and stomach, and thought I had some kind of food poisoning. After a sleepless and very painful night I went to the hospital first thing the next morning, and had emergency surgery the same day. Seemed I had an inflamed gall bladder which was also causing problems for my liver, so they whipped the gall bladder out and "oh by the way I stitched up a small hernia behind your belly button on the way out." Thank you, two pregnancies in quick succession, which apparently caused all of the above (not the heatwave). Now I've been told "don't walk, don't drive, don't lift anything," instructions that are almost IMPOSSIBLE to follow when you have kids (which explains the hernia - I had no choice but to ignore the "don't lift after giving birth" instructions in order to care for Madeleine). Last night I was a bit teary. Madeleine cried for ages after going to bed because I had to have the babysitter lift her in there but she wanted her mummy. Then Harry cried and cried because he had wind but I couldn't hold him the way he needed to be held due to the wounds in my chest and belly. Of course Madeleine did eventually get to sleep, and Mr B cuddled Harry until he fell asleep, but I just felt useless as a mother and like I'd let them down by being sick. Again. I think my body has had enough. I have been pregnant and/or breastfeeding (with a little thing called "giving birth" in between) constantly since 2011. During my pregnancy with Harry, I was sick for nearly the whole time. Nothing serious, mostly viruses carried from daycare to Madeleine to me, but it wasn't fun. I'm a bit over it. And now we have the medical bills to pay on top of all our other bills (thank you, multiple unanticipated problems during home renovation), right when I'm working my lowest hours ever.

BUT... I live in a beautiful house in an amazing city - the first time I've felt "at home" since leaving New York - I have an incredibly hard-working, loving and supportive husband who is also very good for a laugh, and the two most adorable children I could ever wish for. So when I'm not feeling sorry for myself, I feel incredibly thankful. It's all worth it. It really is.

↑↑ This guy and his funny faces! Last week I wrote what I guess you'd call a sponsored post (in that I was given a gift voucher to go shopping and wrote a bit about what I bought). I so rarely do these kinds of posts because they sit uncomfortably with me, and I wonder how you feel about them - I don't want you to feel like I'm trying to sell to you or use you! A while ago I made up my mind to only accept gifts etc with posts if I would a) actually happily spend the money myself anyway, and b) think what I'm writing about might interest or benefit you (or both). And I've followed that rule in every one of the (very few) sponsored posts I've ever written. Last week after I wrote about my little boy and his beautiful Very Hungry Caterpillar stash, Mr B read the post and said it was "delightfully snobbish." It got me thinking. Because I hadn't intended to be snobbish at all, delightfully so or otherwise. I thought I was being truthful. And I wondered if I was being too apologetic in the post because I was worrying too much about your reaction. I don't know. What do you think? Am I being unfair on the sponsor? On you? On myself?

(And here I am, worrying about your reaction again. But you matter to me! I can't tell you how amazed I constantly am that you take the time to read this blog, and how much that means to me.)

I'll leave you with this little video because it is pure joy. If you ever get chocolate gelato all over your face and front on a 42 degree day, this is how you should clean it off.