happy mothers day

Today is Mothers Day in Australia.

As a daughter, it is a day for letting my mum know how much she means to me, and for reminding me to treasure her the whole year through. I hope she likes her present - a hat made using this pattern by Rachel of i dream of knitting. The bone coloured wool was inherited from my mother's sister, who died in a car accident six years ago, and the blue soy/cotton was left over from a dress that I made for her youngest granddaughter.


As a mother, it is a day to appreciate my children and give myself a day off. I love the fact that within Olive's playgroup, every single one of us mums has bought our own Mothers Day present. My gift to myself is this gorgeous print by Tollipop.

I am in love with this painting, which has helped me to do so much more than just make the house look pretty. Immediately after Aggie was born (six weeks ago already!), I became haunted by the number three. I have three children, three daughters, but only two of them are living. Having a new baby is a stark reminder of all that I missed out on when Millie died, and yet there is so little in the material world to reflect her huge presence in my heart. So this simple painting has helped me enormously, serving as a visible and permanent acknowledgement that we have three girls. Later today, we will take some flowers to the cemetery and my family will be together for the first time.

unfortunately ...

I picked this game up from The Lark's blog. Just type "unfortunately, [your first name]" into Google (including the quotation marks) and see what comes up.

Unfortunately, Leona is not going to make it as a singer.

Unfortunately, Leona's uncompromising nature ultimately landed her a long-term stay at a federal facility.

Unfortunately, Leona is required to remain in Verdandi form when using this spell.

Unfortunately, Leona, ticked off many people in her lifetime; she was rather unkind to people.

Our elephant was a little greedy guts, and unfortunately Leona and I had forgotten to bring money to buy bananas for him.

So unfortunately, Leona always misses the office Christmas parties. But why does Leona have to do what her family tells her? Because she still lives at home ...


I can add a few of my own:

Unfortunately, Leona's 3-4 hourly breastfeeding regime with her newborn daughter means that she has plenty of time to browse other people's blogs but none to create anything to post about on her own, leaving her feeling decidedly craft-deficient.

Unfortunately, Leona was too short of time (and hands!) to take any photos when preparing for and participating in her two-year-old's birthday party. All I have is one photo of the cake:

It is supposed to be a teddy bear's picnic, in keeping with the theme of the party, which we held in a park. I decided to go for simple with the cake this year, after viewing all the disasters on the very funny Cake Wrecks blog and thinking about last year's mess.


It was supposed to be Wa Wa, the dog from Japanese kids show Inai Inai Ba. Check out his most famous song here - it's crazy fun!

introductions

So there I was, posting a blog about absurdity on Tuesday when I was already in pre-labour. Contractions were worth noticing by 6pm that night and baby Agnes Reid was born at 9.37pm. I didn't use any drugs but did question my decision a couple of times there ;)

So without further ado, I would like to introduce Miss Agnes Reid, born at 38 weeks gestation and weighing in at 2.9kg or 6 pound 6 ounces.

We're all pretty happy to have her home :)

absurdity

As with any pregnancy, I have been offered a lot of unprompted advice lately. Some of it less reliable than others. Take these pearls of wisdom, for example:
* Don't blow up balloons because the baby will run out of oxygen.
* Don't lift your arms above your head because the baby could get strangled by the umbilical cord
* To get the baby to move head down, either do handstands in the swimming pool or ask your partner to shine a torch and talk to the base of your belly.



Meanwhile, Olive found and adopted a rubber chicken that she takes for walks in the pusher, feeds and puts to bed.

this is ... something I'm surprised that I like

Gardening.

Or, more specifically, weeding the garden. The damn weeds and especially the buffalo grass grow so much more quickly than I have time to remove them. So I look at the garden and feel sad that it so out of control.

Yet, when I do get a chance, I realise that gardening is fun! Such a good way to unwind.

This week, I have started a new morning routine whereby Olive plays in her sandpit, the chickens come out of their coop for a bit of a scratch and I crawl around in the garden pulling out weeds. Bliss.

code brown

Today has been a difficult one, filled with death, illness, and housework that remains undone. But rather than deal with any of that right now, I'd like to tell a silly story from a couple of weeks ago.

My partner takes our daughter, Olive, to group swimming lessons at the local pool each week. It's great daddy-daughter bonding time and gives me an hour or so of rare me-time. This particular Sunday, however, they came home rather early and noticeably red-faced.

Apparently, the lesson had just started when the instructor pointed Olive, leaped out of the pool and started yelling:

"CODE BROWN. CODE BROWN. EVACUATE. WE HAVE A CODE BROWN. PLEASE EVACUATE THE SWIMMING POOL IMMEDIATELY."

Olive's swim nappy had leaked. Once everyone realised what had happened, they were quick to react and all scrambled for the edge of the pool. My partner rushed off in embarrassment to change the offending nappy but slunk back later to apologise. The pool was still empty and there was no one to be seen.

The next day, I bought Olive some ugly ankle-to-neck one-piece bathers. And we now have a great story to tell at her 21st birthday party.

this is . . . me taking a picture of myself in the mirror with my favourite accessory

Phew! What a mouthful!

I wouldn't say that Olive is necessarily my favourite accessory (I do have a rather serious bag fetish) but at the moment she is my only and constant accessory. The sling that I carry her in has definitely reached the status of favourite baby accessory, too. It was completely indispensible in Tokyo, where we abandoned all use of the so-called "small" pusher that we had bought in Australia before we left. Baby carriers are so common in Japan, in fact, that public toilets have cubicles with a high chair on the wall that mothers can unstrap baby before relieving themselves. There now, isn't that exactly what you wanted to know? How do I get myself so side-tracked?

Back to the topic: I like to carry Olive with me wherever I go. It keeps her happy because she's close to me and it means that I'm much more mobile than using a pram. I keep thinking that Olive will be too heavy to carry soon but my muscles seem to be growing at least as fast as she is. Maybe I should make myself another sling using more interesting fabric but hey, I live in Melbourne - the black has served me just fine.