35 things ...

... I've learnt, pondered or realised since turning 35. It's been a busy few days.

1. When your life requires you to always carry wet wipes you can eat sticky buffalo chicken wings while driving.

2. Bull terriers are so named as they were used to bait bulls. This explains why they're often so !#%*ing irritating.

But not why they're sometimes so beautiful, would the bulls notice?

3. What's the point of 'easy-peel' lemons? Who ever peels a lemon?

4. It is possible to be too prepared. I thought I was so clever weighing out the dry ingredients for my birthday cake a week in advance and storing them in a ziploc (probably ^TM) bag until I was ready to bake. Turns out combining the baking powder and flour so early on meant the cake didn't rise as it should have. Still tasted damn good though.

5. I've been reading Richard Kelly's biography of Sean Penn and finding it fascinating. Penn's theory of the Chinese Lines of friendship is inspired.

6. It is possible to catch a fish, in a bush, 5 km away from the ocean. As demonstrated by our dog who pulled a dried and stinking, but sizable, fish out of a bush while we were out walking. Weird.

7. At this stage in my life inviting 4 girlfriends over for birthday tea and cake produces a crowd of no less than 9 children (including my own).

8. Making up a batch of cupcakes and providing different colour icing and some sprinkles is a most excellent way of keeping some of the above mentioned kids entertained.

9. It's dumb to visit a bird sanctuary without remembering to take binoculars.

10. Red wine stains on the baby blanket is not such a good look.

11. Yellow food colouring is the most persistent. I'm considering soaking my thumb in bleach for a few minutes.

12. If I had a suitable hiding place I'd seriously consider stashing all the tools etc my husband leaves lying around and then enjoy watching his mounting panic when he thinks he's lost them.

13. He'd be welcome to do the same for me.

14. Watching your children wrestle their own demons is very hard. Whether it's your 10 week old with a nasty cough (Yup, she's got it now. Of course), or your nearly-3 yr old battling her inner turmoil at the uncertainty of growing up, its painful to witness.

15. People are s-t-r-a-n-g-e.

16. Its fun to be on facebook over your birthday.

17. I miss my iPod, I don't get a lot of time to plug in when I'm perpetually keeping an ear open for the baby. I also think it would be oddly impolite to listen to it while breast-feeding - am I over-sensitive?

18. My mother is a SAINT.

19. You can take a nearly-3 yr old to water, but you can't keep her dry.

20. The approaching 5 week school holidays (stupid soccer world cup) fills me with fear and dread. My solution is to event-coordinate the fuck out of it. Frieda won't know what hit her.

21. Toes. I love them.

22. It's good to explore new places.

23. It's as good to revisit the places you've been.

24. Memories from student days turn out to be a little hazy in patches ...

25. One can spend a whole afternoon persuading a slightly constipated and nervous pre-schooler to Have a Poo. Fun times.

26. The tumble-dryer is rapidly replacing the dishwasher in my affections.

27. It's round about no. 27 that one can start regretting the whole 'list of 35 things' concept. 35?!

28. Maybe now that I'm 35 I should do proper research on the appropriate use of 'one' and 'you' and then stick to some kind of uniformity?

29. Ditto the use of colons and semi-colons. I've had it explained to me a zillion times. You know I'm an English Major right? Got a class medal and everything ...

30. Baby wetsuits. Now there's a bright idea (soon to be^TM ).You suit 'em up at bedtime, they're easy-wipe and fully sealed. Should see you through the spills and thrills of even the worst nights.
You read it here first.

31. I found my birthday card from my Granny in the bushes under the postbox, the envelope half-eaten by snails and curiously lumpy. Fearing worms, soil or worse I opened it cautiously over the rubbish bin. Turns out it was one of those that makes a sound when you open it, a very tasteful Tawny Owl hoot (she's a tasteful gal my Gran). I love it, Frieda's intrigued by it and Lego the dog thinks its a monster from the very bowels of hell and must be destroyed! destroyed! omfg!

32. I'm working on a facebook photo album in which I plan to post photos of, and tag, as many of my facebook 'friends' as possible. I've been trawling our photo archives and have found some beauts. I'm kinda toying with the idea of then 'de-friending' anyone who I don't have a photo of, but I already know I won't do that.

33. I may be 35 but I'm still not above forcing Frieda to pause Postman Pat when I have to answer the phone. It was an episode I'd not seen before ok?

34. I'm thinking about home-schooling. Omg no, not actually doing it, just thinking about the concept and how possibly nuts you'd have to be to do it.

35. Turns out I've been mis-spelling 'surprise' my whole life. Suprise!

35

Happy birthday to me!

she ...

... loves the ginger kitty to the extent where I worry for its life. She tracks Fritta down (yes, yes, our cat and our child have very similar names, please believe me when I say we didn’t realise this at all until a friend’s then 4 year old pointed it out to us – doh!), takes her into her pup tent (pitched in the lounge), zips it up and spends ages in there – all quiet except for the hum of contented purring and the occasional rustle. On Thursday however, more than halfway to my Mum’s house, I thought to ask her if she’d let Fritta out of the tent before we left. ‘No Mum’ she answered happily, ‘she wants to stay in there’. 4 hours later when we got home Fritta told us a distinctly different story.

... likes to have cornflakes and ‘bopye’ for breakfast. The cornflakes come from a box, the bopye must be tracked down and caught, wrestled into the bowl, covered in cornflakes and then have its wings wet with milk - this prevents it from escaping. Thereafter the cereal is eaten with relish. This is all her invention.

... will occasionally end up in our bed with us. When I try to roll over to sleep with my back to her (mainly in an attempt to protect all squishy bits from her inevitable flailing limbs) she asks me not to, whispering in the dark that she wants to ‘see my pretty face’. A master of manipulation. It works.

... told me, the other morning when I was giving husband a hard time about something, not to ‘talk all wobbly to my Dad’. This was accompanied by a little shake of her hips which I can only think was an imitation of my body language.

... when asked by a visitor what her baby doll’s name was, answered in all seriousness ‘Zeberebareba’, and so it has remained. Zeberebareba the doll is now part of the family and must be referred to as such. Just to be clear, this from a child who speaks as clear as a bell, Zeberebareba is no baby talk gibberish, it is the name she has chosen for her baby.

... makes us laugh and laugh and laugh.

4th of July?

Frieda brought this piece of exceptional art home from school yesterday. Have I lost a couple of months?

art, art I love you

Get this: this post has nothing to do with babies!

I managed to get myself to the Spier Contemporary Art Biennale at City Hall just days before it closes. The exhibition opened just before I had Stella (oops, mentioned the baby) and was on my To Do list. I missed the chance then but was determined to get there before it closed.

With the rain bucketing down outside and just over an hour before Frieda needed collecting from school I whizzed around it this morning with my Mum and the baby sleeping soundly in her Moby wrap.

Here follows some mediocre photos of some great stuff.

ceramic cow head - love love love.

croxley counter book blankets! double bed size. fabulous.

one of brett's golden truths.

a dreamcatcher made from 4000 black condoms - filtering out the nightmares ...

See? I'm not just all about babies at the mo ... 

(and I finally got my boob-brain around Picasa Web Albums - could it be because the baby is 2 months old today? Two months old!)

second time so lucky

Why is this baby thing easier the second time round?

Ok so you're more confident about actually handling a newborn and you know your boobs worked last time so you're pretty sure they will again (not that this is a guarantee) and it's been years since you slept the sleep of a non-parent so the lack thereof doesn't kick you quite so hard in the gonads. You know that babies make weird noises so you don't jump at the slightest wheeze and croak from the crib. You know their toes won't rot off if they're not bathed everyday so you slack off on that a bit. You know that sometimes they just cry for no reason so you don't over-analyse every wail. You know that their poo is gross and erratic so you don't over-analyse in that department either.

But more than any of the above, the greatest lesson learnt and remembered every day is: This Too Shall Pass.
You know with absolute certainty that this period of little-babyness will fly by, will recede into the past at such a rapid rate you'll be left panting in its wake.
This you remember in the hard times, but also in the good. And there's so much good.

Good which you're free to just wallow in.

To stare at her little face while she feeds. To giggle at her chubby, chubby thighs.
To coo and goo. To love each yawn, all of which end with a satisfied little smirk, more than the last one.
To have her relaxed on my chest, awake but at rest. To lie in bed listening to her snuffling and farting in her cot. To watch her watch her sister, already intrigued, envious, nonchalant.

This time round I know to enjoy every second of this, this precious baby time. The world will still be there when I emerge from this bubble, I'll get back into the swing of things, new challenges will present themselves and new routines will emerge.
But for now there is this, and I'm loving it.

A friend, who has one child and probably won't have more, told me when I was pregnant that I was lucky to be doing this all again. Possibly caught in a moment of apprehension I didn't really take what she said to heart, but now I realise how right she was. I am indeed.

crap photo, great cake

You wouldn't believe I'm supposed to be cutting back on wheat and dairy would you? (For the baby of course.)
You wouldn't believe we're still not well.
You wouldn't believe how much happier this cake made us.
Nom nom nom.
Hello May.

bye bye april

And what a weird one you've been.

Last year April was one of my most prolific blogging months, and there was lots to blog about. There was the one about camping (one of my favourites I must say), and Election Day, and our new Prez, and some doggie love, and lots and lots of food.
Moments of Perfect Clarity was made Blog of Note and Julie outed me, pushing my followers up from 3 (Julie being the only one I didn't know personally) to 35 overnight and forcing me to examine my own 'blog like nobody's reading' philosophy.
Fun times.

This year April has been, um ... exciting, in different ways.
Most obviously has been the presence of our Stella, not even an itch a twinkle in her father's crotch eye last year this time.
She's been delightful: she sleeps, she eats (and eats and eats and eats), she tolerates the most godawful amount of noise and disruption from her sister and dog and family in general. She's been a bit colicky, but in a most apologetic way, and she's keeping us all highly entertained with her massive weight gain (6kgs today - Frieda's weight at 4 months!).

What's not been as much fun is our ongoing sickness. Just recently I thought I should've started breast-feeding the whole family weeks ago, could've improved our general health no end.
Besides yukky and inconvenient and frikkin' expensive it's just been so b-o-r-i-n-g, and with husband still not 100% and myself periodically still feeling shite we're not completely over it.

And then there's been Frieda.
My monster. My heart. My sweetest child and my biggest trial. She's the acid in my punch, the unexpected clove in my dinner. She's the sun which breaks through my clouds, the jester of my court. She makes me smile through my tears, makes me cry with rage, plunges me into the depths of despair, makes me soar with love and laughter.
The post about Frieda, and how she's taken to this massive upheaval in her life, has been written and rewritten over and over in my mind. I need to sit and blog it out, I need to purge, to pour it all out and sift through it and wrangle it into some kind of structure. I need to download, debrief, expel.
Maybe I'll get there in May.

May will hold it's own trials and jubilations, but May will be May, it'll be a different month. And that's all we need right now.

... and on with the whinge

Or maybe I'll just do this instead:

~ be grateful for the return of the internet, we've been without it for 6 days.

~ be grateful that although we could've had 2 weeks away on holiday with what we've spent on doctors and medication this month, we've been able to afford what we've needed in the way of health care. In this country, as in most in the world, this is not to be taken lightly.

~ that the special pharmacy colic home brew works, it really works!

~ that while we've been holed up at home for far too long, with the sinking feeling that we're missing the last fleeting days of summer, we've a nice comfortable home to be in, one filled with things to do and space to do our own thing.

~ that while parenting has never been more challenging than this while of newborness + manic nearly 3 yr oldness + colic + sickness, we're grateful that we're parents.

~ that Finding Nemo exists

~ that no matter how ill, we're always able to cook, bake and eat well

~ that we've family so close, and so willingly to help out

We're still not well.
Some days it feels like we're getting there, others just feel like we'll never be well again.
I've a theory Stella thinks we communicate by coughing and identifies us by our different hacks and wheezes.
Even our cat's got the flu.
The most robust of us all is the 6 week old. And she's robust indeed - weighed in at 5.7kg yesterday!

Cough wheeze sniff.

sweet 'n sour

Sour ...
~ the respiratory issues in this family would make one think we live in an asbestos box. Husband and Child's coughs persist and my good news this morning is that I've chronic sinusitis, need antibiotics and have been issued a cortisone asthma pump for the duration of winter.
~ at exactly 6pm on Saturday evening Stella started screaming. It lasted for half an hour. The next night for an hour. The psychological wounds left from Frieda's 3 months of colic painfully re-opened.
~ Frieda's tantrums (which I've not had the heart to blog out yet) have become so ridiculously based on nothing that she had a 45-minute-verging-on-autistic meltdown recently because I didn't fold a baby blanket to her exacting specifications.
~ the custardy filling on the super delicious lemon tart we made this weekend.

Sweet ...
~ we celebrated Stella's one month birthday on Sunday.
~ the meringue topping on aforementioned lemon tart.
~ due to my bad health I qualified to receive one of the last remaining flu vaccines in the country. Score!
~ the only reason we had a second child (besides the whole duty sibling thing) was because we'd heard about a local pharmacy's homebrew colic 'miracle cure' and get this: it works!
~ being reminded of heart-meltingly divine things about babies such as the tiniest balls of fluff which hide in the hollow between their thumbs and forefingers.
~ Frieda's endless games in which I'm Mummy Chicken/Dinosaur/Rabbit/Wildebeest, she's Big Sister Chicken/Dinosaur etc etc and Stella is Baby Sister Chicken ... yada yada yada - she's a complete Jekyll and Hyde child at the moment, but when she's the good one (I momentarily forget which is which), she's divine.

And as for that tart ... the recipe calls it Marie-Therese Amichaud-Debize's Lemon Tart which is just fucking pretentious. I prefer to call it -
The Very Nice Lemon Tart which is Not Lemon Meringue No Matter How Much Husband Insists that it Is.
Or something like that.
Here goes ...

Basic blind-baked shortcrust pastry (buy it, make it - Marie-Therese would probably give a rat's ass, I don't)

Lemon Custard Filling:
Beat together juice of 2 lemons, 2 cups milk, 4 tbsp castor sugar, 2 tbsp cake flour, 1 tbsp cornflour, 2 egg yolks and 1 whole egg.
The recipe says heat over a bain-marie but you know what? I cooked this in the microwave (shock! horror!), zapping it for 30 seconds at a time and whisking well inbetween until custard thickened.

Let custard cool a bit then pour into pie crust.

Beat 2 egg whites with 6 tbsps of castor sugar, spread over the top and bake at 170 degrees for 15-20 minutes. You could grill it a bit too if you'd like the meringue to darken significantly.

I can't explain exactly why it's not traditional Lemon Meringue. The lemony layer is not as tart as usual, more a velvety custard, and the meringue is not intended to be very light and fluffy, just a nice sweet topping. And while I'll always be a huge fan of LM, this was a nice alternative and much quicker to make (what with the cough, microwaving 'n all).
Either way, Stella loved it and that's what counts right?