Learning To Simplify

I often forget the simple things. I look at the whizzbang fabbo toys that spin and light up and play for my children and I get sucked in just as they do, they’re advertised with “Super Hydraulic Action!”, how can I say no?

Then occasionally my kids will bring me back down to earth, reminding me in their subtle little way that they don’t need, or truly want the super duper whizzbang toys, they want something that grows their brain, that actually challenges them to think, something that doesn’t play for them whilst they sit and watch.

Today’s entertainment was Declan’s collection of cars, driven around a map that I drew out the paper I’d torn off our butcher’s roll. Declan beeped and honked to himself as he drove each car carefully round each corner, Connor pushed them about before he decided that eating them would be the way to go. They had a fabulous time, and all it took were $2 cars, some paper and a marker.

It was that little push I needed to remind me to stop where I was with the Christmas presents.

Adjustment

I spent July afflicted by seemingly never ending food poisoning combined with an acute case of cystitis that was never even vaguely cured by antibiotics. In August I clued in that something was up and peed on a stick. Immediately a deep pink line appeared, darker than the control line, telling me I wasn’t just a little bit knocked up, I was well and truly preggers.

I did what any completely sane and rational person would do upon finding this out. I said “FUCK!” loud enough for the neighbours to hear, ran into the bedroom slamming the door behind me, shoved my head under the pillow and burst into tears.

I love my children, I love having them in my life, but I was just coming around to the idea of sticking with the two boys. We would be great with a standard car, a three bedroom home would suit us just fine and the odds were even, there were two parents and two children, minimising the amount of kid juggling we had to do – we had our little routine for getting in and out of the car completely down and I was starting to like it that way and forget my plans for a third child.

Then some super hormone defying sperm managed to break through my protections and ruin all my future plans for family game nights involving four players.

I went to the first ultrasound to date the fetus and hoped it was just a false alarm, a fake positive on the test… and all the other tests, and maybe my blood got mixed up with someone elses at the doctors, and it was them that was pregnant, not me. Instead I found out I was due on the 19th of March, exactly a month after my eldest’s third birthday.

Then came my first OB appointment at 15 weeks, she couldn’t find the heartbeat on the doppler, suddenly it was obvious, it had all been a mix up! The blood work was incorrect, the sonographer had been wrong, the growing belly was just too much KFC, our fridge wasn’t cool enough which was why I STILL seemed to have food poisoning every other day and the fact that sneezing in the wrong way would lead to an emotional breakdown was just proof that my zoloft needed to be upped.

I laughed as she left to room and joked about how silly it was that I’d been thinking I was pregnant, until the OB returned with an ultrasound machine, squirted the cold blue goo onto my belly and didn’t discover a three piece meal with the Colonel’s secret spices, but a fifteen week feotus, hanging out and waving at us.

I went back to the car and cried.

I’m now just over 18 weeks pregnant and I’ve only just started adjusting to the idea of having a third child. I thought it would hit me all of a sudden, one morning I would just wake up and would be thrilled about the prospect of a third child, that hasn’t been the case, it’s been a slow process where I take a leap forward followed by a step back.

I’ve spent a lot of the time since August angry. I’m angry at the powers that be for putting me in this position.  I’m angry that our life, the lives of the boys, is going to be turned upside down by a tiny being.  I’m angry that no one seems to understand why I’m not elated. I’m angry at myself for not being elated and angry that I’m not grateful that I can even conceive in the first place when so many of my friends are struggling to conceive their second or even first child.

Somewhere in the background is fear. I will be the first to accept I’m not mentally stable, so I’m scared of the effects of having another child on my emotional state. I have a condition that causes my membranes to rupture prematurely which cannot be prevented in anyway, my waters broke at 37 weeks with Declan, then 34 weeks with Connor and I was told that with each consecutive pregnancy it’s likely to get earlier. One of the things that is said to raise the chance of this is having less than three years between deliveries. I’m very lucky that this won’t lead to my baby arriving prematurely, but I have to lay in a hospital bed leaking fluid until I hit 36weeks when the feotus is developed enough to be induced, not exactly how I want to be spending a few weeks.

We went for the anatomy scan last week, and it was like acceptance just washed over me. I have no idea what it was, but something hit me whilst I was laying on my back with a stranger ramming a mushroom shaped zappy thing into my belly button. Something just washed over me, and it wasn’t acceptance, it was more than that, it was excitement. For the first time I felt more than fear and anger at this blob of cells inside me, I felt excitement at the future ahead, about giving birth, nursing a newborn instead of a wriggly toddler and about adding another member to our little family, welcoming them with open arms instead of frustration and tears.

It took a while, the adjustment that I never thought would happen has happened, I am now an expectant mother with a spring in her step and a baby in her belly, instead of fear I am excited about what is in store for us. I never thought it would happen, but now that it has I feel wonderful, and that is the best feeling ever.

The Shrine Of Disney

Before I had kids I promised a lot of things, no dummies (lasted 6 days!), no crazy flashing light up musical toys (my eldest wasn’t even born before we started collecting them!) and a minimal amount of characters.

I’m not sure what my issue with characters is. I think partially it’s the difference between a $11 pair of generic shoes and the $25 that can be spent on the same pair with a picture of Spiderman on. It’s also the thought of turning my child into a walking billboard, I don’t want him advertising for Disney or Nickelodeon or whoever. Primarily I think it’s just bitterness at asking for an Ariel doll one Christmas in my childhood and receiving a generic redhead mermaid doll, hell, if I didn’t have it then my kids can’t either. Santa had a lot to answer for that year.

As with all good intentions it has slowly dissolved. The boys have an older cousin, he’s just over two years older than Declan and my sister in law’s  last child, so most of Declan’s clothes for the first two years off his life (until he caught up size wise with my tiny nephew) were hand me downs. I’m not a complete idiot, so I’m not going to take someone’s generous gift of clothes and say “Actually, no thanks, they have Thomas The Tank Engine on them” and hand them back, so things started creeping into his wardrobe that way. Anything I bought new for Declan back then either featured generic images or was completely plain.

Then Dan and I discovered, through my nephew’s clothes, how much easier it made everything, a battle to put on the “blue pyjamas” turned into sheer excitement and even a rush to the bedroom when we said “time to put on your Thomas pyjamas”. Suddenly all the arguing about getting dressed eased as I slowly started slipping in character vests and pyjamas  – of course, nothing that would be seen outside of the house, because then he’d be back to walking billboard status.

Then my baby became a toddler, and then my toddler became a preschooler with a mind of his own. We now can’t walk through a store without him pointing out every single character he can see – and we don’t even have a television! He watches a minimal amount of shows and yet somehow everything gets sucked in. Dan had a picture of Batman as his desktop background for a month or so, and well, if Daddy thinks it’s cool then it’s probably awesome, he’s never watched any form of Batman, the movies, the TAS, even the old campy version, and yet it’s still so firmly engraved in his brain that it’s the most awesome thing EVER and so he must have anything and everything that features the caped crusader.

We went into Big W for some shoes today, we walked out with a Batman vest, a Roary vest, a Spiderman t-shirt and a Lightening McQueen hat, come night time Declan unpacked them and took them all to bed with him. We have no shoes because Dan and I started to argue, Dan (and Declan) wanted the Spiderman shoes, I wanted the generic We both refused to back down and ended up walking out of there with everything but something to put on the kid’s feet.

Dan’s argument, which I can understand, is that this is basically the first time we’ve bought him an entire wardrobe of clothes, with absolutely no hand me downs, so he should get clothes that he wants and loves.

My argument is that this is the first time we’ve bought him an entire wardrobe of clothes, and I’d rather not spend twice the amount because they have Lightening McQueen on the front.

Cue standstill. Dan says I have to be less of a tightarse, I say Dan has to pander less to what his two year old wants.

Do we give him what he wants and so keep this enthusiasm for his clothes and getting dressed still strong, or do I say “Sorry kid, Best & Less only from now on, say goodbye to Ironman.”?

I say we swap our son for a child with a little less fashion awareness. He couldn’t care less about branded toys over generic ones or duvet covers with XYZ on them,  just the clothes. I thought I had another ten years before I would have to deal with such self-awareness!

My Kid Is Awesome

Declan announced, right as we were doing the whole “give Daddy a kiss and say goodnight routine” that he had to draw a picture before he went to bed. One thing I have learned from raising my spirited child is to pick and chose my battles. He already had a pen in hand so I grabbed him some paper from the printer and said that he could draw one picture but then it was time for bed, he told us that he would draw Daddy and got stuck in.

The above picture is what he came up with, complete with hair and beard, and the most recent addition to his drawings, a nose! It may not make him the next Dali or Picaso, but I think it’s pretty damn awesome.

The One Where My Eldest Takes Another Ten Years Off My Life

A few months ago Declan was sick, running a high fever and climbed into my lap for some cuddles. Literally the moment he settled there his arms bolted out from his body, his neck lost all tension and his eyes rolled into the back of his head.

The following hours after that are a blur, just fuzzy images in my head. Getting angry at the emergency line operator because I was calling from a mobile so she made me confirm our address three times, looking at my little boy’s body on the floor and seeing blood pooling from his mouth, watching Dan cry because our son was just a limp body on the floor.

The only thing that remains clear in my mind is when I looked down to see his head tip backwards and his eyes roll to being completely white. That image is burned into my mind. I had nightmares about it for weeks after wards and I still do occasionally when I’m stressed out or having a hard time with something.

The seizure was a febrile convulsion, just the brain’s way of dealing with excessive heat from a fever, the way it was explained to us was that the body works out what is briefly expendable so it can focus on stopping the fever, and so shuts off the brain for a couple of minutes. Now, I know I’m a little underqualified here, but if I was the body this probably wouldn’t be my way of doing things, I’d shut off the appendix, the spleen or maybe one of the kidneys for a few minutes, but not the brain. It sounds like overkill to me, but who am I to argue with evolution? Declan is apparently susceptible to them, which, for the record, is entirely Dan’s fault, as he also had them regularly until the age of five. Once again this is just another point in my argument for demanding full medical history from any man you even think about breeding with, or even have sex with, just incase. My next husband I shall vet more thoroughly.

Today Declan went from waking up fine that morning to burning up before lunchtime, he was given Nurofen to drop the fever and we tried to get him in a cool bath but he now knows the routine so I think we would have had more luck (and less injuries) shaving a cat. Around midday he was walking over to my armchair when it happened, his arms flew out to the sides, his eyes rolled to white, his body went stiff that he just fell backwards as though you’d toppled a domino. He cracked his head on the tiled floor and immediately snapped out of the seizure, obviously his body decided that to deal with his pain the brain was probably pretty important right at that moment. I was just happy that I was soothing a child who was upset because he’d hit his head rather than one that was upset and frightened because his body had started spasming uncontrollably.

But I still saw his eyes roll, and saw his body briefly lose control, I still felt that moment of sheer terror, and once again, every time I close my eyes that vision is back. I don’t think there is anything more scary than the thought of losing a child. Not until I gave birth did I realise how much these boys would change me and my life, the thought of not having either of them in my life any longer completely turns my blood cold. I love them with every last bit of me, but I dread to think how many years each of these episodes have knocked off of my life, let alone how many grey hairs they’ve added to my skull.

Laundry Day

Laundry Day doesn’t come around very often in this house, and when it does it rarely goes out on the line. You see, my line is tucked away in some long forgotten corner of my garden… right outside the kitchen window, and as I don’t spend much time standing at my sink (washing the dishes is only slightly less horrific than doing laundry) and staring out of my kitchen window I have a terrible habit of forgetting that I ever hung it up there. A week later I’ll glance out of the window whilst I’m filling up the kettle and I’ll notice the funny looking collection of rags that someone seems to have left on my patio, complete with bird poop, sun fading and the occasional huntsman… oh wait, that’s actually the entire contents of my wardrobe, oops!

So my clothes generally dry on a clothes horse within the confines of my garage, never to be kissed by the sun… or pooped on by a bird. A the little spiders that make their home on my clothes line can continue to enjoy themselves, doing whatever it is that little spiders do.