That’s pretty much the theme of our household at the moment.

Aidan started playschool in January and he’s had two bouts of tonsillitis and one of bronchitis since then. Hunny has been doing some local work travel (more on that another time) and came home with something flu-ish last week, which he promptly gave to me. Actually, he may or may not have picked that up from Aidan before he left but anyhow, now Erin has it too, which is most horrible.

Sick babies are so tough to deal with. They understand nothing of what’s going on, they fight against you administering medication, and they like to breathe through their noses all the time, silly things.

Erin is a real fighter when it comes to resisting her meds. Of the three doses of antibiotics I gave her today, I must have used almost double the meds to account for all that she successfully managed to spit out. It’s easier to give a cat a pill!

On the positive side she’s actually a rather cheerful sick baby, in fact she is an allround sweetheart now that the colicy days are over. Aidan is less disrupted by her presence these days (he was quite traumatised by the shared parents in the early days) and is turning into quite a sweetie with her, if a rather rambunctious one!

I have 4 weeks of maternity leave left, and I am conflicted about going back to work. I like the sense of purpose work gives me, but I am also enjoying my little girl so much. I suppose the nerves are also because I don’t know what I am going back to.

I have lost most of the weight already, about 2kg’s shy of my pre-preg weight, but the shape is not the same! Time to start some exercising, try and get some muscle back.

So there’s your 2 minute update on the life and times of Alex, I promise to post something more substantial next time.

The trouble with thinking that you are of superior intellect is the feeling that the world and life owe you something for it.

So Nirvana popped up on my ipod this morning on my drive into work… and it got me thinking

Imagine you are the daughter of Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain.

You mother is an aged teenage fruit cake and the courts don’t think she’s fit to take care of you.

Your father plastered his brains to a wall with a shotgun.

If you want to hear his voice again you can put on a CD and listen to him alternately mumbling or screeching some of the most obscure lyrics ever written. They probably don’t mean anything other than he was on heroin at the time.

Makes me think that my sometimes annoying and slightly dysfunctional family is just fine thanks.

 

All bounced out

So we sleep under a Blessed sky tonight, and hope our luck holds for another 354 days.

Raise your glasses to 2010.

Three years before I started a blog I started a blog. Hunny created it and told me to post some stuff on it. I didn’t grasp the concept very well at the time, but I wrote some stuff and posted it. And then I promptly forgot about it.
I have no idea where it is now. It’s out there somewhere still, I’m sure, but I don’t even recall the name, and I didn’t put my name to it, so chances are good I won’t ever find it again.

This blog can’t suffer that fate, if only because I own its domain, and that domain is my name. So unless I forget me name, it’s safe. It’s not safe from neglect though, I’ve proved that time and again.

I’d like to find that old blog of mine though. It was a great snapshot of my life at the time. In a crushing job, planning a wedding on shortish notice, and suffering greatly under the stress that came from the crappy job.

My how times change! Now I’m married, have a gorgeous boy child, and really battle to get freak-out stressed about work. Pity that, because that level of stress is a great diet plan for me. Sure I get annoyed; angry sometimes. And when faced with something new and daunting I still get some knots in my stomach. But that’s nothing like the wreck I used to be when things weren’t working and I had to go and sit in the toilets for a while lest I cry in front of my co-workers.

Two things have contributed to this. First off, I have a much better bunch of colleagues. These guys do actually work as a team, not against one another. But mostly it’s Aidan. I finally have the ‘this is not the end of the world’ perspective I have always been searching for in my work-life.
Because seriously, the world will not end if our software is down for a little while. Hell, I don’t even work on the kind of stuff that could kill a couple of people if it’s not operational (think medical software), never mind the stuff that launches nuclear weapons and kills whole nations.

Now when 2PM comes around, I go home. Sure I’ll pitch in and stay a little longer if it will actually achieve results, but now I have a boy to go and collect, and love, and be fascinated by, and be frustrated by, and laugh at, and laugh with, and teach, and learn from. And that is just so much bigger than any job I have ever done.

Well, it’s been a while folks? Hasn’t it? They days are just flying buy and I just realized it’s been 5 (five!!) weeks since I last posted.

I’ve figured out part of the problem though. My best ideas come to me in morning traffic, which worked out okay previously, because I’d get to work and do a quick post. Now I’m working a 6 hour day, and leave strictly at 2pm each day, I feel kinda bad about blogging at work.

Not to mention that work has blocked my blog anyway, so even if I had a few passing thoughts to post, I can’t get there!

So here’s a few passing thoughts that I have managed to remember for long enough to post.

First, some Kudos: Outsurance, for those non SA readers (yeah, all of you, say Hi ) is a local insurance company. They do this really nice thing, where they deploy pointsmen to intersections where traffic lights aren’t working, or that are unusually congested in peak time traffic, to ease things up. Great advertising for them, and we score too. Well, I saw two of their blokes riding off to their assignment the other day, on their typical lime green scooters, and I was impressed by the gear that the company provides for them. Most motor cycle delivery guys are in an old, doesn’t fit properly, helmet and whatever else they happened to be wearing that day. Given their income bracket, that doesn’t usually mean great protective gear. But these two Outsurance guys had been provided with proper protective gear, from jackets, pants and gloves, even down to proper riding boots and knee guards. I’m impressed. Thank you Outsurance for kitting out your guys in such a responsible manner.

Next, about being a mom. I was gonna post this on mothers day, shows how well I am doing. I wasn’t very maternal before Aidan. I’m still not that much so except where it comes to my own son. But I have noticed a strong empathy with other mothers everywhere. I ache for the poor mom walking down the street with the little boy in clothes that no longer fit him, pants that should have been to the ankle now closer to his knees. I’m sure it’s not her intention, but she just can’t afford to keep buying new clothes for a boy that won’t stop growing. I cry for moms of sick – really sick – babies who have no choice but to just cope, because their child needs them. I even feel terrible pangs of emotion for moms in movies who are trying in vain to protect their children from some unseen evil.

And I notice cases of child neglect or abuse in the news so much more these days, and it turn me cold. Knowing how dependant Aidan is on me, how could someone deliberately hurt a child?

I come from a family of sympathy criers. Well, the female side anyway. My mom, sis and I are all the same, show us a sad movie, or put us in a room with someone else who’s crying, and we’ll be crying along with them. And now because of these emotional revelations I’m so much more raw. There is just so much more to be emotional about. It’s quite a rollercoaster ride.

On the flip side, I’m often fighting back happy tears for every mom I see share a special moment with their child.

I need to keep some tissues in my handbag …

I’m not vocal about breastfeeding habits. That’s because I’m a bit of a prude when it comes to mentioning certain body parts on a public forum, but I have been breastfeeding Aidan. It was pretty successful after the first few chaotic days of figuring it what, where and how much were behind us. In fact, in his first 8 weeks the little guy was gaining more than 400 grams a week on average. For perspective, the norm is 100 – 300 grams. There were two weeks where he gained 500 grams, so I guess that’s proof that breastfeeding was working for us.

Then in week 8 thinks started to slip. A couple of factors influenced this, including Aidan’s first round of vaccines, but mealtimes became a stressful situation as Aidan refused to take a full feed. We pushed through and things got back to normal after two trying weeks. It was a horrible time for me as my little guy actually pushed me away screaming after a half feed, something that was very hard for me not to take personally. But like I said, we got over it.

Then things started going wrong again last week. I decided t give it a week to sort things out and see, before we tried offering him some formula. I had planned to keep up the breastfeeding until Aidan was 4 months old, and then most likely swap him onto formula when I went back to work. I occasionally even considered the noble intention of expressing at work and keeping it up till 6 months, but that was a fleeting idea and not practical. Books and magazines like to tell you how you can make breastfeeding and going back to work, well, work. How you should lobby to get a breastfeeding room set up in your workplace and etc. Well that’s not going to happen at my work, so it’s my car in the parking lot or a stall in the bathroom. I bit exposed and unhygienic respectively. Not to mention that my breastpump isn’t the quietest on the market.

That week ends today, but I gave in early. We gave Aidan a bottle of formula yesterday afternoon and he gobbled it down with no ill effects. And though he had breast again at bedtime, he slept for 7 hours last night. That’s not seven hours between feeds, which was his previous record, that 7 hours of sleep, 8.5 hours between feeds because he wasn’t at all inclined to go to sleep last night – do they put vitamins/caffiene in formula?

I’m still a little hurt that he doesn’t seem to want what I have to offer anymore (though he’ll take breastmilk from a bottle fine – salt in the wound) but I’m going to cut my losses now and make the swap. It will allow me stop worrying about whether this feed he’ll get a full meal. It’s a concern that raises itself every 3 hours, though my going into the situation stressed probably doesn’t help matters. And I can stop watching what I eat. I can have a good strong cocktail. I can go horse-riding without having to make sure I have some top-up milk expressed because that always diminishes my supply. I can put my fat arse on a diet and shed the rest of this weight. I don’t have to go and sit in another room to feed Aidan when we are at friends or have friends over. Aidan should go longer between feeds on formula, and hopefully that will mean only one night feed in future. And it’s easier for dad to feed.

In return for these benefits I miss out on giving my son the best nature has to offer, and I loose the status of being sole provider of food for him. It’s a tough choice, but in the end I think we both, no make that all three – this isn’t a happy situation for Hunny either, can do without the tension around mealtimes. So it’s the end of an era. And funny to think this was such a tough decision for me, because initially I wasn’t convinced I wanted to breastfeed at all.

- a decrease in size of an organ caused by disease or disuse
- undergo atrophy; “Muscles that are not used will atrophy”
- any weakening or degeneration (especially through lack of use)

I suspect my blogging ability may have fallen victim to creativity atrophy. It’s been more than 4 weeks since I last blogged. I know this because we took Aidan for his second round of vaccinations this week. The vaccination dates are 4 weeks apart and the last post I wrote was in part inspired by a very grumpy baby one day after his first round of vaccinations, though I hadn’t realized that was the cause at the time. Somehow if felt very personal when he didn’t want to feed, but I know better this time.

I didn’t want this blog to be a journal. It was intended to be a place to exercise my creative juices. I knew I would be drawing posts from personal experience, but I was hoping to present that experience in such a way as to make it an adventure or maybe a reflection, not just an account. Lately I have found that I can’t produce much other blow-by-blow accounts of my experiences with motherhood, so I haven’t gotten round to putting any posts to keyboard. The problem is, the longer I leave it, the worse it gets.

I read many journal type blogs, and I enjoy them, but that just isn’t what I had planned for my little space of the interwebs. I was going be a writer. I was going to produce something that was practice for the novel I want to write one day, the best-seller that will free me from the 9 – 5 and allow me to pay off the mortgages of my family. I suspect my family will have paid off their mortgages the hard way before I produce a best seller, but hey, we all need a dream, right?

So, lets just get back on the horse shall we? The longer I wait for creative juices to return, the less likely that becomes. What you’ve missed while I’ve been away:

- Aidan is now 12 weeks old, 6.85 kg’s and 62 cm’s long. He has blue eyes, chubby cheeks and a button nose. He loves his hands, he tries to stuff both of them in his mouth at once. He does a technical ‘sleep through’ on occasion: 6 hours between feeds, once a night. It doesn’t feel like a sleep through to me. He’s a happy friendly guy who still manages a smile even when his tummy hurts or he’s waging internal wars on nasty vaccine gogga’s.

- I’m still in the worst shape of my life. I can hide it enough so that people remark that I must have lost all my baby weight, but I know the truth. 4 stubborn kg’s still to go, but so much more work to be done to put things back in their correct places.

- I’ve been back on a few horses a few times, but my own only once. He was reasonably behaved, but time hasn’t worked any miracles, he’s still the same nutty creature he was 10 months ago.

- We’ve celebrated our first Christmas as a family, but the spirit was missing. I’m not sure what went wrong. I suspect that Hunny & I have both realized that Christmas no longer belongs to us anymore, but Aidan was too young yet to appreciate it, so it kinda slipped through the cracks. But lest you think we are terrible parents, we did buy him presents and entertain him excitedly tearing off the wrapping paper on his behalf.

- Hunny’s spider bite, remember that? It’s finally healed. It took six and a half months, regressions caused by infections, and several roles of plaster gauze and granuflex, but at last it is done. The scar looks like a bullet wound scar.

- I graduated from my part time studies, top of my class. Proof that you don’t have to succumb to baby brain.

We have had an extraordinarily blessed year, and for that we are most thankful. Thank you God for being there in the bad times and the good times too, even if we forget you then sometimes.

Merry Christmas everyone!

I dreamt last night that my boss’s wolf ate my cat, and it was my fault. I put the cat in a closet to hide it away from the wolf while I continued partying at my boss’s house, because I was too lazy to take her out to the car and put her in her box. The wolf knew how to open closet doors. I’m not sure how my cat ended up at the party …

I’ve had this terrible rush of guilt every time I have seen my cat today.

I did my first bout of proper maternity shopping today. I bought some larger and looser clothes a few weeks back, but today was the first time I hit the actual maternity section. Funny how proper preggie clothes make me look bigger. I actually look pregnant in them; in my normal clothes I just look fat.

Scale says 64.5 kg’s today. On Tuesday it said 66 kg’s. I think we might need a new scale, or can pregnant chicks actually retain that much water?

Also I have pregnancy rhinitis. Yeah, it’s a real thing, I’m not making it up. My sinuses are so very clogged that I can hardly breathe through them. Most frustrating. Turns out it wasn’t a cold / flu after all. Drixine helps plenty, allows me to sleep at night. Doc said it’s okay too, so bonus! And yes, I have tried a saline spray, and no, it doesn’t help. At all. I don’t know what is that’s filling up my sinuses. It seems as if my sinuses themselves are closing in. There is no snot at all. So very frustrating because it feels like a good blow will sort it out, but I can blow until I get a draft of air out of my right tear duct and nothing green and gooey comes out.

Oh, and quick question: If you were eating lunch at a restaurant and the woman at the table directly in front of you was showing about 5 cm’s of arse between her g-string an her jeans, would you say anything? It really ruined my lunch seeing that every time I looked up, but I couldn’t bring myself to walk over to her and tell her that she might want to pull her pants up a little. She was a slim an attractive woman, but it’s not what I wanted to see while tucking into my bacon cheese and mushroom on rye.

I think I’m reading too many crime novels. Last night I dreamt that I solved the murder of two young newly weds. It was a very sad tale how they were drowned in a drainage damn. Hunny and I were traveling in the area, and as we passed the damn I had a vision of their murder. I was then able to tell this to the cops and they arrested the teenage murderer. That’s me, dreams and visions

I do think it’s related to the 7 crime novels I have read over the last 2 months. The problem is that I’m so determined for instant entertainment these days that I can’t take the time to get into something a little more intricate and slower moving. I have chopped most of my entertainment down into bite size chucks. I have this vague feeling that 1 full hour TV show is to much time to dedicate to one story. Give me two half hour stories instead, then I can fill my head with twice as much junk in the same amount of time.

It seems I’m winding my whole life up to this pace. Everything must happen quicker. Dinner at a restaurant takes half an hour these days, home cooking is chosen at the fastest to prepare option and I’ve even taking to showering instead of a relaxing bath. What happened? I really need to slow down a bit before I totally ruin out of energy. I’m quite sure I’m not producing that at a faster rate.

And it’s already February! What’s going on here? Did God flick the fast forward switch?!