A face that only a mother could love

Lately I’ve been thinking about faces that only a mother could love. Or, more precisely, about the origins of that cruel and silly saying, and about how much YOUR mother most likely loves YOUR face*, no matter what your face happens to look like.

Your wrinkles? She is SO PROUD of the decades of life and love that you put in to creating those wrinkles. Pimples? Your mother thinks they are perfect. She can’t believe her little baby is so grown up! Oh, your snaggletooth, it just breaks her heart! It is JUST like the snaggletooth that used to peep out from below your grandfather’s wiry moustache, and it is a powerful reminder to her of family and blood and the inescapable links created by DNA.

I am incapable of seeing my children through a fashion editor’s eyes. Of imposing on them those bizarre, objective, unrealistic attributes that are supposed to combine to create “beautiful,” like long legs, wide eyes and full lips. I look at my baby's chubby little thighs and I don’t believe I’ve ever seen anything more delicious. Ralph wears a dopey, droopy-eyed expression when he’s tired that makes me want to envelop him in kisses. Scout has short little legs that will probably stop her from ever being long and lean, and I smile with pride every time I see them, because they are just like mine.

My legs, that I have hated for as long as I can remember being aware of legs.

I spent decades wishing my legs were longer and thinner and smoother and more tanned. Yet now I look at my daughter, who appears to have inherited EXACTLY my legs (DNA, baby!) and, on her, I think they are beautiful. Perfect.

This realisation is changing the way I look at everybody. First of all myself. How can I hate my legs, when I see them on my daughter? She certainly doesn’t hate her legs. (She doesn’t hate mine either!) As far as I can tell she doesn’t think about legs at all, in any capacity other than how good they are at running around, and twirling, and splashing in the bath. If someone was to offer to take Scout’s legs off her and replace them with a longer, leaner pair, I would want to scream at them, and thump them, and have them arrested. How could they infer that ANYTHING about her was less than exactly right, or dare to make her feel that way about herself? But if those legs are perfect on Scout, how can I hate them on myself? When Scout is my age, I will still think her legs are perfect, and want to tear apart anyone who would try to tell her she needed to change herself. Maybe, possibly, probably even, my mother feels the same way about MY legs, right now. Ain’t THAT something to think about!

It is also changing the way I think about other people. Not that I’ve ever been one to walk around judging people on their appearances. I have many faults but, thankfully, that isn’t one of them. But now, when I’m absently people-watching, I’ll play a game in my mind where I'll focus on a feature of someone, like their nose. And I'll imagine what that nose must mean to that person’s mother. How their mother must know that person's nose SO WELL in the interior of her mind, how deeply every contour of it is etched in her heart, and how she would change nothing about it. Not one cell.

And so nowadays I look at all the people around me in all their different shapes and sizes and colours and regular and irregular features and all the rest of them, and I think just how much their mothers must ADORE all of those faces and bodies. It’s actually a really fun and special thing to do. Instantly, the guy at the counter when you’re paying for petrol, the middle-aged woman crossing the road ahead of you, the bored-looking secretary at the doctor’s surgery… all of them, seen through the eyes of their mothers and now me, are perfect.

* I’m aware of course that not all families are the same and not all mothers and children have the same relationships that I enjoy with my own mother and with my own children. Not everyone has known the love of their mother and that is tragic and heartbreaking and, if that is you, I am so, so, sorry. Everyone deserves to be loved, unconditionally, from the very beginning. I hope you know deep love, now. Either way, I want you to know that if I ever look on your face, I will be looking at you and imagining mother-love and I will truly believe that you, too, are perfect.

Photo is by Milada Vigerova, licensed under Creative Commons

Beautiful

Every day I tell Scout she is beautiful. I tell Ralph he is beautiful, too. I don’t mean beautiful on the outside, although through my mother-eyes, I happen to think they are exceptionally good looking kids. I mean they are beautiful souls.

“Beautiful" in our house is an all-encompassing word that means kind, buoyant, loving, affectionate, funny, clever, quirky, creative and, most of all, bringer-of-joy.

“You are so beautiful,” I tell Scout, when she tenderly rocks her baby-doll to sleep saying “shh shh shhhhh, shh shh shhhh," or announces that she is going to twirl for the entertainment of the (blind) dog. “You are so beautiful,” I tell Ralph, when he scrunches up his nose with immeasurable glee because he has climbed onto a chair all by himself, or begs me to dance, or crawls over to the giant teddy and cuddles it with an audible “ahhhh.”

I text Mr B a picture of the children standing side by side at their little blackboard, drawing a duet masterpiece in chalk. “They are so beautiful,” he texts back. And later, on FaceTime, “Scout! Ralph! You are beautiful! When I get home I am going to kiss you and tickle you!”

But lately I’ve been second-guessing myself and my vocabulary. I am bringing up my children in a world that places a premium on physical beauty, and the having or the lack of said beauty is tied to everything from self esteem to bullying to professional success to relationships to personal finances to mental health.

Is it dangerous, I began to ask myself, to raise my children to feel worth from their parents in a loaded word like “beauty?”

“You are so beautiful,” I whispered to Scout last week, as I carried her up the stairs to bed. What I truly meant was, “Your soul shines like a beacon of good in my dark and confused world.” But as I walked back down the stairs alone, I started to panic. What if all she had taken from my words was “You have lovely eyes and your hair is shiny?”

Ultimately, though I think that this is where the combination of language and parenting can be a powerful thing.

Because I have decided that it is OK to tell my children they are beautiful. Often and with punctuation. In fact, I have decided that it is important for me to do this.

For many years to come, my children will learn - from peers, from strangers, from media, from pretty much everywhere - that physical beauty is something to be arduously sought. They will learn this whether I want them to or not, because we do not live in a cave.

But my children are learning their language by immersion, not from a text book. So far, nowhere have they read or been told “The word ‘beauty’ only means ‘looking good’.” So in these first, formative years of their life and language, their experience of the word “beautiful” is teaching them that “beauty,” first and foremost, means “goodness.”

Sometimes Scout pushes my hair out of my eyes and says “Mummy you are so booful,” and I know her words have nothing to do with how I look. She also tells the dog, the cat, her baby dolls, her baby brother and her friend Bella that they are “booful,” again with zero reference to their looks.

While I can’t protect either of my children from what others will tell them in the future, I am laying a linguistic foundation today that I hope will equip them to understand the aesthetic of beauty to be rich and complex and multi-layered.

And soul-deep.

So I will continue to tell my children they are beautiful. Because I want them to feel beautiful, in the full meaning that I have chosen to give that word, and because I want them to learn how to look for the true beauty of people they meet as they go through life.

And when the world starts to load "skinny" or "pouty" or "even-featured" onto their experience of that word, it will already hold, in their minds and hearts, something infinitely more... beautiful.

Image credit: Volkan Olmez, licensed under Creative Commons

Hunting for highlights

So gastro? Turns out it's not so much fun. All my plans for the weekend were washed away in a rather miserable and sorry-for-myself 48 hours of lying in bed and moaning and intermittently rushing to the bathroom to do unthinkable things.

The highlights?

* Venturing downstairs on Day 2 for half an hour and telling the kids I couldn't kiss them because I didn't want to make them sick, so Scout cuddled my ankles

* When I peered over the top of the stairs at one point to ask Mr B a question, Ralph looked up and yelled "Mummy!" with the biggest smile

* Hearing the children squealing with happiness downstairs, playing with their father. Actually that was bitter-sweet because I was SO jealous not to be involved

* Ralph yesterday morning calling "Mummy! Mamma!" from his cot, and hearing Scout explain, "Don't call Mummy, you have to call Daddy because Mummy is sick"

* Getting up this morning feeling about 60 percent, and discovering the house NOT trashed and most of the washing-up done and the clothes washed and the toys picked up. Mr B is the BEST

* Keeping down a cup of tea

I spent the two hours this morning between getting up and the kids waking up, putting my little kingdom to rights. Packing things away, and finishing the washing-up, and refrigerating the HUGE bounty of fresh, organic fruit and veg a friend had brought over the day before, and looking up recipes for ways to use said bounty before it all goes off, and packing the kids' bags for daycare, and giving the dog his eye-drops, and sorting the papers on my office ready to go back to work today.

It felt good to be back in charge of my tiny world again. I couldn't face the thought of breakfast, but that cup of tea was GOOD. Now the kids are singing in their beds, wanting to get up. I'm so relieved! I spent last night listening to their every cough, wondering if it was in fact vomit. Hopefully my miserable, lonely quarantine has saved them. All fingers and toes crossed!

So... how was YOUR weekend?

Image credit: Morgan Sessions, licensed under Creative Commons

At table

Let's pretend we are all sitting around the table together, talking about our lives. Can you please pass the salt?

How was your weekend? Ours was absolutely lovely, filled with little moments that in the grand and global scheme of things probably hold no great significance but, in the tiny universe of our family, may become milestones to how we live and love.

I taught Ralph the word "grapes" and he pronounced it "gapeths" with gusto. So cute!

Scout helped me cook dinner last night, perched on a stool beside me with her apron on. Everything was a sensory learning experience. "Mummy can I touch this garlic?" she would ask, softly stroking the peeled clove. And, as I opened a jar of capers, "Can I just try one little one?" followed by frantic evacuation of said caper from her mouth, and the endearingly optimistic pronouncement, "I think it probably will be better when it's cooked."

Ralph, who still doesn't walk or even stand on his own, taught himself how to climb onto the bouncing zebra toy, ride it, then get off again. All by himself. He was immeasurably proud.

Scout spent a good hour yesterday being my mummy. As her baby I am required to spend a lot of time asleep, so it's actually quite a restful game. She tucks me in, and kisses me, finds me a toy to cuddle, then says "I love you a moolion boolion troolion my dahlink. To the moon!"

Another new word for Ralph this weekend was dance ("danth"). Ralph LOVES to dance, and once he learned how to say the word, he would yell it at the end of every song, before the next one came on. I also found it very sweet and telling that when I offered to play some music for him, he crawled as fast as he could not towards the Sonos speaker, but to the record player.

After Scout and I had cooked, we ate dinner together as a family last night. This is SO rare in our house, because the kids tend to eat and go to bed quite early, and Mr B doesn't get home from work until quite late. It was such a treat to sit down at the big table and share a meal, all of us, that we had cooked together.

Of these small things are memories woven and held.

Thank you to everyone who wished me well with our "VIP lunch" on Friday. It went really well and everyone had a great time, complete with an impromptu octogenarian and nonagenarian dance party to The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy. I've already posted all my thank-you notes to our guests. I'm trying to get better at sending thank-you notes.

I'm a celebrity! OK not quite, but the mail I sent to Pip Lincolne for her 52 Hellos project made it onto her blog yesterday. I was proud and a little bit embarrassed to be there. I think I knew but it didn't really sink IN that the letter I wrote her might be publicly displayed for people to read. Maybe that's how people on reality TV shows end up doing silly things on camera. They KNOW the cameras are there, but there's too much going on in their immediate world that they forget about the potential others who are witnesses to what they do and say. I don't mind, but maybe I would have tried to be a bit more clever or witty or write about something more momentous than being rejected in an umbrella incident if I'd thought of that. So maybe it's good that I didn't, because nobody enjoys reading self-conscious writing.

How about you? What will you share at the table today?

Snail mail: adorable postbox toy

Warning: if you love snail mail and/or you have children in your life, this toy will rock your world.

It’s a painted, wooden, miniature replica of the Australia Post boxes you see all over the country, with the same little slot for posting letters, and the same pull-down panel for posting parcels, as the real boxes. A little door in the front means children (or the child-like at heart) can retrieve their letters after sending them, and start all over again.

The box comes with six cute little wooden letters and postcards (you can read the mail - there’s even a postcard from Wills & Kate to Harry, during their holiday in Australia), and six removable (via velcro) wooden stamps.

Scout and Ralph love to make their own mail-fun with this box. Scout “writes" letters (aka scribbles all over my note paper), folds them, then puts stickers on them as stamps. Then she posts her letters into the box. Now it is Ralph’s turn. He opens the red door, crushes Scout's letters in his chubby little fist, and throws them gleefully around the room.

These actions have earned Ralph the title of Postman, so Scout will finish another letter and announce “Postman I need you!” to alert him to the fact that her mail needs to be delivered to the far reaches of the playroom, post haste.

I watch them play as I sit with a note pad on my lap and write letters to my own pen pals (hopefully not to be crushed by the postman). It gives me so much pleasure to see them play together in this way, and to pass on the joy of snail mail. Next, Scout says she wants to try putting some mail-art on her letters.

What has been making you happy lately?

 

ps. This is in no way a sponsored post, so I haven’t mentioned the maker of this toy. But if you want to find it, the website is prominent in one of the pictures. You’re welcome.

Scout says...

Lately, around our house...

SCOUT: Hey Mummy you my lunch. I gonna gobble you up.

ME: Oh no, don't gobble me up! I'm not your lunch!

SCOUT: Shoosh. Lunch can't talk.


:  :  :

SCOUT: I really need Weetbix Mummy. My tummy's lonely.

:  :  :

ME: Hey listen to this classic old song

[Split Enz plays “I see red I see red I see red”]

SCOUT (singing with gusto): I see pink I see pink I see PINK!

:  :  :

ME: Yeesh Scout, that’s two poo-filled nappies in half an hour!

SCOUT: Happy birthday Mummy.

:  :  :

MR B: We are a Bulldogs family. We all barrack for the Bulldogs, don't we Scout.

SCOUT: No Daddy.

MR B: Oh! Then who do you barrack for?

SCOUT: Mummy!

She sure does make me smile.

Meet Scout & Ralph

Meet my children. They're pretty great. Their names are Scout and Ralph.

Those are not their real names, of course. Their real names are no big secret and if it's eating you up inside and you just have to know, simply scroll back through some of my older posts and you'll find them. I haven't exactly been backwards when it comes to talking about my children.

But from now on, I will refer to my daughter as Scout and my son as Ralph on this blog, because I want to lessen the digital footprint I am leaving for them.

I'm not overly concerned, really. There's nothing on this blog that is likely to embarrass them when they are older. No bare-bottom photos; no potty-training stories; no revelations about emotional, mental or behavioural challenges; no recounts of arguments with their father; no heartbreaking confessions from me... just a celebration of how much I love them.

And that has been deliberate, all along. This blog is my happy place, so I write mainly about the GOOD things in life that make me happy. Also, I want to respect my family's right to privacy so I don't write things about them or myself that should really stay with us.

However, I have in the past used their real names. So if you were to type those names into a search engine, you'd find the old posts I've written about them.

That's ok, but from now on, there won't be any more. I mean of course if you were to type in their real names, my blog is likely to come up anyway because we share a surname, but nothing specific.

(As an aside, that's why I always call Mr B "Mr B" on here. A lot of you know his name and again it's no big secret, but this way his digital footprint is his own, not something of my making).

You may or may not know or have noticed it in the past, but both of my children bear the names of storybook heroes. They weren't named for those heroes, per se, but we were certainly aware of the characters and fans of the books and looked forward to reading the children the stories of their namesakes when they were old enough to enjoy them.

So when I came to select pseudonyms to use on this blog, I gave them the names of some of my other favourite fictional children. Scout (from To Kill a Mockingbird) is brave and inquisitive and intelligent and thoughtful and kind and fun. Ralph (from The Lord of the Flies) is charismatic and clever and compassionate and reflective and kind.

All attributes I like to think I see in both of my babies, and all attributes that I would hope to nurture and celebrate in them.

Now please excuse me while I go and hug my children.

Flowers for the bees

Swaying in the morning breeze,
 Growing sunflowers for the bees. Loving the buzzing in the open air,
 In the flower garden bees are everywhere.

~ From "Flowers for the Bees" by Gregor Hacska & Zanni Louise

On the weekend I showed Madeleine and one of her little friends the green and growing things in our vegetable box. "These are baby tomatoes," I told them, "and these fuzzy yellow flowers are baby strawberries."

We talked about how plants needed sun and water to grow big and strong, and how we had to be patient before we could pick the ripe fruits and gobble them all up.

I think it is so important that we teach our children about where their food comes from, and how to care for the world in which they live.

Yesterday, my bloggy friend and children's book author Zanni Louise, and her musician husband Gregor Hacska, launched a fantastic online resource that will help get our children thinking about and enjoying these ideas.

They have created The Quincys, an interactive world of music, storytelling and ideas for children. Every month, you can use The Quincys as a resource to entertain and teach children (and yourself): Week 1 they will release a new song and video; Week 2 they'll tell a related story; Week 3 they'll suggest a fun activity; and Week 4 they'll share some fun resources and facts for learning more.

After breakfast this morning, I'm going to play their first song "Flowers for the Bees" for Madeleine, then take her into the garden and we will have a little chat about how bees need flowers and flowers need bees.

You can take a look at The Quincys here, and keep up on Facebook here

{Beautiful illustration from "Flowers for the Bees" supplied by Zanni Louise, and used with permission}

Allo, Mummy

Oh hello, have you been enjoying the sunshine? We sure have. But this was how my weekend started.

It was about 4am on Friday night/Saturday morning. I was coming home from a night out dining, drinking and dancing with my friends…

No, I wasn't. I HAD been fast asleep in my bed with my ear-plugs in, when I felt something touch my cheek and it woke me up. Pulling the ear-plugs out, I could hear the soft sounds of a little person breathing. Blearily, still surfacing from sleep, I wondered why Mr B had brought Harry into our bed and what my baby was doing on my pillow. The little person flung his hand around my neck and I thought, "Isn't that the most adorable thing? It's almost like he's hugging me!" Then I realised Mr B was saying something about going downstairs for a second and asking me to keep her safe on the bed.

"Him," I corrected Mr B blearily as I watched his shadow retreat. For a moment, everything was quiet. Then the arm around my neck shifted and, millimetres from my ear, a little voice equal parts creepy and adorable, said, "Allo, Mummy."

Turns out Madeleine had been having a nightmare (something about a lost hair-band) and Mr B had tried but failed to resettle her, then brought her into our bed. Let me tell you she was very pleased to be there. The nightmare was long forgotten but so, sadly, was my night's sleep. She kept up a constant stream of chatter for the next two hours while Mr B and Harry both snored, snuggling happily next to me and stroking my hair and saying things like "I like you lots Mummy" and "I loving you Mummy" and "Harry still sleeping?" and "I have breakfast yet?" (at about 4.45am).

At 5.45am when Harry woke up (it is a true miracle that he didn't wake sooner since his cot is RIGHT next to our bed), I sat up to feed him and Madeleine sat up too. She covered his face and mine with repeated kisses, which didn't make breastfeeding particularly easy but which was ridiculously lovely.

And then we all went downstairs before the sun was up and BAM, just like that, it was time for the weekend to begin. Ah weekends, a restful reprise from the busy work week. The next two days continued as they had begun. Exhausting, entertaining, adorable, exasperating, hilarious, filled with love and filled with fun.

So, basically just another day in a house with a toddler and a baby. How was your weekend?

Here are some parenty-style links that you might enjoy:

* DIRECTLY related to my story above, this piece on the ageing influence of motherhood made me laugh

* I have a love-hate relationship with IKEA, I take issue with being forced to follow the arrows, for one. But ever since having kids I've had to make my peace with them. Those storage solutions are just so handy. And did you know they now have a stationery range?

* This beautifully expresses how I feel about the daycare drop-off (yes, I've started that early)

* Holy moly, how cool are the little cardboard castles in this party for a bunch of two year olds?

* What writers can learn from 'Good Night Moon'. We love this book at our place!

* Do you like to drink flavoured water?

* How to grow your own crystals. I LOVED keeping 'crystal gardens' when I was a kid. Did you?

* Pretty much love all the clothes in this shop!

* Equal parts loving and loathing. Yeah, I get that

* Beautiful children's rooms

* New-baby gifts that might actually get used

* Women need a year to recover from childhood. Well, that lets me off the hook a bit

* Super cute party food for little ones

Dear mama: don't listen to the stories

Warning: rant pending.

This is a little pep talk for everyone expecting (or one day hoping to expect, or friends with someone who is expecting) their first baby. It is called DON'T LISTEN TO THE STORIES.

You know the stories I’m talking about. The “You Will Never Sleep Again” stories. The “Your Breasts Will Sag Forever” stories. The stretch-mark stories and the projectile vomit stories and the no-sleep stories and the nappy-contents stories and the traumatic birth stories. Especially the traumatic birth stories.

My advice is this: stop listening to them! These stories will not help you but they will probably scare you. And there is so much GOOD about having a baby, and so much practical stuff that you NEED to know, why would you bother with the scary, unhelpful stuff?

It’s like a trigger flips inside grandmothers and mothers and aunties and sisters and cousins and friends and complete strangers that makes them want to spill their most intimate and, in many cases, their worst labour experiences to expectant mothers.

I don't get it! Are they thinking expecting mothers need to be taken down a peg or something? I imagine their inner monologue goes something like this: “Hey pregnant woman, you are clearly expecting everything to be soft and gentle and loving like a baby powder commercial, and I am here to tell you the hard truth.”

Whereas in reality, the pregnant woman is probably already plagued by nerves and fear and the unknown, alongside her excitement and anticipation, not to mention exhaustion and sleep difficulties and professional and financial nerves and a to-do-list that is getting out of hand. The last thing she needs is your doomsday prophesy.

I remember when I was a good eight-and-a-half months pregnant with my first child and we had gone out for a quiet dinner at the pub after work. There I was sipping my mineral water and eyeing other people’s glasses of sav blanc with longing when the waitress, quite a young woman, approached our table and began regaling me with the story of her sister’s recent labour.

If even half of that story was true, someone will be making a mini-series about it some time soon. It seemed to last for days (both the labour and the story). At one point I swear there were spy-thriller spotlights pinning the poor woman to her hospital bed. At another, some kind of water-jet that suggested they were trying to pressure-hose that baby out like old paint off a brick wall.

Mr B kept walking away from the table, ostensibly to warm himself by the open fire but really to get away from the Labour From Hell story. I could see his shoulders shaking with silent laughter even though his back was turned. Then he would return, realise the story was STILL GOING, and head back to the fire. Unfortunately I was trapped, both by the near-impossibility of maneuvering my enormous belly away from the table and between the tightly-packed bistro chairs, and by the deep-seated social constraints that made me smile and nod politely even when she got up to the bloody bits and the screaming bits and the frankly anatomically-impossible bits (“the baby was coming out sideways”).

Later in the car on the way home, we roared with laughter. “What about the bit with the water torture?” Mr B gasped, red faced and wiping away tears. “How could you have left me there alone!” I shrieked. “She just wouldn’t stop!”

Recently I was at the zoo with a friend who was expecting her second child. Another woman overheard us talking about it, and began to share the stories of her recent miscarriages. It was so sad. That poor woman. We both realised how raw and heartbreaking those experiences were for her, and how clearly she just needed to get them off her chest, to share her sadness and anger at the universe. Neither of us begrudged her this need, because neither of us could imagine how difficult such a situation must be.

But of all the strangers with whom to share her sad, sad story, did she really have to pick the pregnant one? A rounded belly, it seems, is as much an invitation for uninvited stories as it is for uninvited touching.

So, the point of my rant is this: don’t listen to the stories. You don't need them. Deflect the conversation away, if you can. Sometimes, I point-blank told people, “Don’t tell me that, it’s not helping.”

Because this is your pregnancy, not theirs.

And your baby, not theirs.

It will be what it will be and the one thing that is within your control is freeing yourself up to enjoy it. Let's face it, it’s a lot easier to anticipate happy things if your mind isn’t full of tales of woe.

ps. That belly? That's Madeleine, at eight and a half months.

ps2. Here's another resource: the handy "pregnancy food card" I made when I was pregnant, if you're that way inclined