Erin will probably be our last child. Perhaps if I didn’t have to work things may be different, but two is all I feel I can handle as a working mom. Knowing this, I find I am mindful of all the ‘lasts’. This will be the last time I am cocooned up in a hospital with my brand new baby. This will be the last time I buy size 1 nappies. This will be the last time my days revolve around feed, burp sleep. The list is long.

At the same time I am fearful that all Erin’s ‘firsts’ will erase Aidans. I worry that I didn’t pay enough attention to remembering with him, because I didn’t think I could ever forget anything about him. But I will if I don’t record them somewhere, and that’s what this is about: Remembering Aidan in all his first child glory.

Like the way before he could crawl that he would spin around in circles on his bum, laughing all the way.

And how his dad got his first laugh out of him by beatboxing. And it only worked once.

How we waited till the only 2 days I have ever been out of town for work to start crawling. I was sitting at the airport waiting for my plane home when he upped and crawled after the cat.

How he was born with the tip of one ear folded over, and Hunny tirelessly tried to stop him sleeping it into the same fold. It straightened out on its own soon enough.

How he ate everything when we started solids. Any veg, loved his dads bolognaise, pureed chicken.

His first word (after dada) was ‘up’ not a request to be picked up, but a decription of where the lights were. Then his Afrikaans Ouma taught him the Afrikaans equivalent, and lights became ‘up-boo’
For months lights were ‘up-boos’.

Butterflies were bitty-bitty-byes.

He still struggles with pronunciation of some consonants. ‘L’ is substituted with ‘Y’, ‘J’ with ‘D’; so Jelly sounds like Dey-yey.

He can make almost anything into a motorcar, even if motorcar is a block of wood and ‘motorcar has no wheels’

Thursday is his favourite day of the week, 3 his favourite number, and he loves spotting ‘A for Aidan!’

He loves trains, fire-engines and space rockets and will beg you to play Youtube video’s of these things over and over again.

The most prized of his matchbox car collection is ‘truck flames on the side’

He can twist my arm in an instant with his mispronounciation of ‘Pweese Mama’, and he is incredibly polite when half asleep, taking his bottle with a ‘Tank-oo Mama’ (yeah, we still give him one bottle a day – when he wakes at around 4AM)

He has the tiniest freckles on his nose – you have to be right up close to see them, and the most amazing eyelashes.

He has the coolest belly-laugh that he cannot control, and a naughty sense of humour already, deliberately answering your questions incorrectly with a grin on his face: ‘Green light means STOP!’

He is clever and sneaky, and will send you out of the room if he wants to be naughty, and ask the other parent if one says no.

He hates loud noises unless they are his own. Thunder sends him running to a parent for a cuddle. He gives the best hugs.

He amazes us daily with his ability to remember songs, rhymes and stories in two languages. When he was just starting talking and brought out a new word we would first have to figure out what language it was before we could try to distinguish the word.

He talks to his toys, takes some to bed with him, even putting them on his pillow and tucking them in with a blankie.

When he went through a brief fear of the plughole stage he was worried for his bath toys, insisting we take all of them out of the bath before we took the plug out.

He loves to help his dada make food, and he eats his supper much better if he has helped make it. He also watches the food channel with his dad.

I feel so blessed to be a part of this boy’s life, being able to watch him grow up, but as he passes each milestone I know I will miss the little boy he is right now.

I love you my gorgeous sweetheart boy.

- 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!

Confidence is a funny thing. If you don’t have it naturally it’s so difficult to gain. If you do have it naturally then it sticks like glue. Then there is the confidence that comes from naivety, which is what I think I had with my biking. You’re confident because you don’t know any better, then something bursts your bubble and you need to learn confidence all over again, one baby step at a time.

My head knew that there were dangers involved, but they didn’t translate through my body. I wanted to get on a bike, so I did it. Then I came off said bike, and now my body knows what it has to be afraid off. Not having a bike to ride for 6 months didn’t help either. Getting back on after 6 months was like learning all over again. The difference is that this time, I was nervous.

Speed doesn’t bother me much. Each ride we go on I start out slowly, but as my confidence grows I get more comfortable with the throttle. It’s the cornering that quickens my heart rate and tightens the muscles in my arms & shoulders. My eyes see the barriers I might crash into before they see the route I’m trying to take, and any good biking instructor will tell you that your bike goes where your eyes are looking… My brain has to remind my arms that I need to relax. I can almost feel those impulses traveling from my brain to my arms, telling them they need to relax so I can lean into my turn. It’s amazing how the human body works.

My confidence is slowly returning though. I could feel it creeping back into my veins with each kilometer traveled, each turn executed, each successful negotiation of traffic I did this morning. It was a glorious feeling: each time I didn’t panic when the road ahead wasn’t clear was a victory.

When it returns this time, it will be confidence that comes with knowledge and experience, and that to me is the best kind to have.

in•spi•ra•tion
–noun
1. an inspiring or animating action or influence.
2. something inspired, as an idea.
3. a thing or person that inspires.
4. the act of inspiring; quality or state of being inspired.

Rather illusive thing that… Time to have a go at creating my own.

For me 2007 rolled right into 2008 with little change. It’s it funny how we expect new year to start off fresh and invigorated, even if we did nothing to ensure that it would. Getting a fresh canvas doesn’t help if you are still painting the same old stuff on it.

Work didn’t slow down much for me over December and we jammed a whole lot of entertaining & socializing in over that time, so I probably started my year with an energy deficit. If I get more nights sleep like the last one (Beautiful. Solid, deep and comfortable dreamless sleep. Ah, so lovely) I’ll make it up soon enough. I’m not going to rely on that to kick-start this year though, it’s time to make some changes! Never having been a big one for new year’s resolutions, this will be an adventure for me *just keep telling yourself that love!*

First on my list: I need to become a morning person. I’m better than I used to be, but I still waste too much time lazing in bed on weekends, or feeling hard done by because I didn’t get to sleep late. My inspiration to pull off this challenge: my Hunny. He’s a true morning person, can’t sleep in later than 7AM on a weekend even. It’s because of his enthusiasm for the day (and his list of things to do) that I do often haul myself out of bed early on weekends, but I have to stop resenting it once it’s done…

Next up: Those little slivers of fat I’ve been accumulating over the past 5 years? Those have to go. I was always the skinny side of normal growing up, but last year I think I crossed that line. My inspiration for this one: This past Tuesday I saw myself in harsh light of a clothing store change room – complete with that ass-shot that you don’t easily get at home, thanks to the surround mirrors. I haven’t been clothes shopping in a while and I was both surprised and horrified.

The third item, and this relates to number two: I will eat healthier. That means actually eating breakfast, keeping to a healthier lunch (try to keep away from the pizza and crisps), and learning moderation at dinner. If I’m eating something tasty my urge to finish all of it is always stronger than my ‘I’m full’ reflex. Inspiration for this one will once again be that eye-opening changing room experience, coupled with a long standing desire to be kinder to my body.

Item four relates to this blog: Get back into a regular posting habit, if I ever had one! To kick start this I am committing to the 30-in-30 challenge. Starting right now I’m attempting to post 30 entries in 30 days. I’m shocking with routine, so this is going to be rather difficult for me. Regardless of that I’m setting myself a couple of extra parameters:

1. No posts about the 30-in-30 challenge and how difficult it is
2. Posts must be longer than 100 words
3. At least one post a week must include pictures

The inspiration for this one: my Amatomu blog stats (and the occasional comment) prove that I do have readers. Fresh pangs of guilt brought on by June’s comment this morning have prompted me to provide them with new material.

I’ll post a summary (not less than 100 words) of my progress weekly, wish me luck

Around 4 years back I started a countdown to a much anticipated vacation. I started about three months out, and crossed the days off on a small calendar I printed and keep on my desk at work.

The calendar proved pretty useful - it was in plain view 5 days a week – and I started using it for keeping track of planned events, mostly horse shows and closing dates for entries to those shows. As a result I kept printing my calendars, keeping 2 months up at any given time. I also continued to cross of the days as they passed. It became part of my routine. Get to work, cross off yesterday, get coffee and carry on with my day. I’m still doing it now, 4 years later.

It crosses my mind every now an then that this is much like a prisoner counting off the days of his sentence in lines on the wall. Despite this gloomy perception I have been unable to break thehabit. I need that part of my morning routine. It also makes it easy to spot today’s date at first glance.

It also fits with my life perception that my best days are still ahead of me, and that’s not so bad, is it? Or maybe it is…

I commented to a friend the other day that I feel like I’m still on life’s starting blocks, but hell, I’m 28! If I haven’t got going yet, then when will I? I think my perpetual expectation that tomorrow will be better; tomorrow I will do more, takes away from what I have already achieved and really, I haven’t done badly for myself. I just haven’t done much of what was on my list. You know what it’s like: set yourself a list of things to do in a day and by then end of the day you have only ticked off a couple things from that list. Still, you’ve been busy all day and you’ve done quite a few enjoyable things in the process.

Building a career in IT never was on my list, but I’ve done that pretty well. Getting married wasn’t on my list for at least another 4 or 5 years but I’ve done that too, and believe me, it has been and still is the most wonderful experience. Domesticating myself wasn’t ever going to be on my list, but guess what? I did 3 loads of washing while working from home today and cooked dinner. The horse-riding was on the list, but in a different direction to the one I have ended up taking.

Perhaps the list needs updating. I’m not who I thought I was going to be, but I like who I am none the less. I think I’ll take some time out for the remainder of 2007 to reflect on what I have achieved, and scrap that old list; it’s no longer applicable here.

I doubt this will stop me from crossing the days of my calendar though, but I hope it’ll be with a sense of achievement, not with a sense of perpetual urgency to get myself to someplace else …