Simple Sunday

Today we have had no plans, except to stay at home and recieve visitors.  Doesn’t that sound old fashioned?  We had a friend over for morning tea and another expected for afternoon tea.  It’s all been very genteel.

The baby has not been so relaxed… he’s been sleeping well at night, but not very settled during the day.  I think I hear him waking up again right now.

So quickly, here’s three things I’m grateful for this week:

A beautiful tropical downpour on the way home from Bungendore, it wasn’t cold, but we got to watch huge thunderheads form and roll across the landscape.  Watching the dams fill up was beautiful, too.

Friends who come visit and don’t care about the state of my house.  These ones are very important.

A baby that now happily sleeps for five or six hours at a time when I most need it.  I didn’t realise how much I was missing my sleep until I started getting some of it back!

Happy Sunday!

There and back again

We are back from our whirl-wind family visit, and I don’t think I’ve ever been quite so relieved to be home.

While we were away, the baby turned six weeks old.  This is a good landmark – he smiles at people now, and is sleeping for longer and longer.  He has grown out of the ‘new-born’ size nappies, which is kind of shocking.

Six weeks also marks the point where the doctors say I can start climbing again.

I’ve gotta say, I’m a little bit scared.  My body feels like it’s back to normal, but I haven’t lifted anything heavier than a full laundry basket in months.  All of my climbing callusses are long gone, and my fingernails have not been this long and beautiful since, well, ever.

On the other hand, this is a spectacular challenge.  Whatever climbing fitness I’ve had is long gone, but the technique should still be there.  Whatever fears I once had about climbing, I faced a much bigger physical challenge giving birth.

Tonight I’m going back to the climbing gym for the first time, a little nervous, a little excited.

Bring it on.

You learn something every day…

What did you learn today?

I learnt how to get baby poo stains out of the carpet.  I think.

While I was learning that, Ryan was learning how to make basil pesto with the basil from our garden.

Hmmph.

Anyway, a friend from uni has a blog called You Learn Something Everyday.  So if you’re feeling like brightening someones day, you could always pop over and leave a comment.

Happy Friday!

Near and Far

So many people in Canberra are from somewhere else.  Our somewhere else is further than most – a five hour plane flight and two time zones.

I have been feeling the distance more since we got pregnant.  A LOT more since he was born.  Of course we get visits, and we love them, but..

There’ll never be a time when I can nip round to my Mum’s house, crash on the couch and say ‘the baby didn’t sleep last night.’

The baby will grow up without a knot of cousins and aunties around him.

I won’t be able to give casual parenting advice (and hand-me-downs) to my sisters.

On the upside, we’ve recieved so many parcels in the mail this month that the posty knows my name.  The baby has already been given more outfits that he can wear, and enough soft toys to fill his crib.  And people have written such sweet, beautiful messages – the sort of thing people never say to your face.

Next week we head back, so the baby can meet his grandma, all his uncles and aunties, and everyone else.  I expect he’ll be treated as a princeling, as befits the first grandchild in either family.  He might even get to meet his great-grandparents.

As for me?  I’m just about buzzing with excitement.  The baby won’t know, might not ever know, what it’s like to grow up smothered in a big, noisy, nosy extended family.  But for me, to be back where everybody loves each other just because, and the jokes have lasted longer than generations, and food and stories and laughter and tears are shared without thinking, without self-consciousness… my family is the ground I walk on.

I can’t wait.

Sunday Grateful

Ryan bought a hammock this week.  Right now, he and the baby are curled up inside, gently swinging in the sunshine.  With both hands free, I’ve cooked eggs on toast, done the dishes, put on the laundry… and now I can write to you!

I hope you have a wonderful Sunday in store.  Here are three wonderful things that happened to us this week:

1.  A sudden thunderstorm that comes and goes in ten minutes, soaking the garden and breaking the week-long hot spell.

2.  Sneaky friends who invite us for afternoon tea, but really plan on cooking us dinner.

3.  Ice coffee, made from scratch with proper espresso and a cocktail shaker.

Growing things

For the first time in days, I have both hands free and nobody is screaming.  Ryan is in the new hammock in the backyard, reading with a sleeping baby on his tummy.   I should be sleeping, but instead I have made ham sandwiches with home grown lettuce and home-made plum sauce.  The plums grew in our backyard, too, and Ryan made the sauce.

We are thoroughly domesticated.  Our veggie patch will never grow all our food, but it’s growing all our salad greens and we’ll soon have a bumper crop of corn and tomatoes. We’re getting so much satisfaction in growing and cooking your own food.

Soon I’ll have the baby back so I can feed him.  There’s a quiet satisfaction in that, too.

Between the baby, and the garden, and our hiatus from the office, we seem to have grown a lifestyle our great-grandmothers would have recognised.  I like that thought.  I don’t think I’m destined to be a stay-at-home-mum forever, but there’s value in these quietly domestic activities that often gets ignored.

The baby has already outgrown his smallest clothes, and the lettuce in the garden is close to going to seed.  I don’t think this quiet domestic period will last very long for our family.  But meanwhile, I’m still getting a quiet satisfaction from feeding the baby and feeding ourselves.

Shiny Shiny

Jamie’s wish prompt this week is ‘how do you wish to shine?’ and honestly, I don’t feel very shiny at the moment.  I’m feeling a bit sleep deprived, a LOT unsure of myself and generally frayed around the edges.

I guess this is motherhood.

Don’t get me wrong.  Generally, my little family is doing really well.  We’re all healthy, we’ve got the feeding thing sorted… we just aren’t very good at sleeping.  Especially at night.  And the stinking hot weather means it’s not just the baby having trouble.

But back to shining.  This is going to sound whiny, but I keep running in to people who tell me I look wonderfully fit and healthy for just having had a baby.  It’s a lovely thing to say, but I don’t believe them.  What I’d like to wish for is my shiny good health back.  No abs of steel, no Jessica Parker magical post-baby body, but like tigger, I miss my bounce.

I wish for shiny good health.

There.

The good thing about a wish like this is I know how to get there.  I need to eat well, start exercising again, and I’m sure we’ll get the sleep thing sorted soon.

Meanwhile, if you’ll excuse me, I can hear a hungry baby waking up.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I can hear a hungry baby waking up…

Unfurling

I think unfurling is my word for 2010.  It doesn’t seem particularly energetic or glamorous, but it keeps coming back to me.  ‘Unfurling’ makes me think of flowers opening and things coming into vision, or coming to fruition.  But mostly, the word gives me the image of a topsail being opened up, ready to catch the wind.

I want to open up, loosen up a little, and ready myself to catch the wind.

Who killed Dave? and do you care?

It turns out that just about anybody in Kaos Court could have killed Dave, and they all had their reasons.  And the whodunit of Dave’s death was the funniest novel I’d read all year.

Who Killed Dave? is very, very, silly.  The main character, Robyn, is a part-time tarot- reader and part-time massage therapist.  She may be the most normal of the Kaos Court residents, which include a virginal, blind telephone sex operator, two Somali refugees and… well, I won’t spoil it for you.

Robyn resolves to discover Dave’s murderer without dobbing on any of her neighbours, but her investigations also uncover infidelities, various issues of paternity, and lead to at least two policemen having waxing appointments.  As the story progresses, she gets caught in more and more bizarre situations, and never seems to escape with her dignity intact.  The injuries she sustains during the novel are truly spectacular, but can’t match the indignities she endures at the hands of nosy reporters, mercenary bottle-shop attendants and her mother.  And the good looking and very friendly Detective Mark Hood always seems to be witness to her latest catastrophe.

I giggled and laughed all the way through Who Killed Dave.  It is very, very silly, but once you’ve accepted that fact it’s incredibly easy to go along for the ride.  The smart-arse language, and the mangled language by some of the characters is absolutely beautiful.  It’s wonderful to read a murder mystery that is so unashamedly Australian in voice and content.

Ryan stole the book from me and finished it in four days.  He sat on the couch and gigglesnorted while I was feeding the baby.  He’s planning on buying copies for lots of our friends, and also our book club… and I can’t give a higher recommendation than that.

Who Killed Dave? is a new novel by Linda Cockburn.  I knew Linda from her book ‘Living the Good Life‘, and her blog about goats, chickens and sustainable urban living.  As befits a committed greenie,  Linda looked for a long time for a publisher who could produce her novel in a sustainable way, and t0gether press has come good with a carbon neutral publication.

Closing horizons

Somebody has replaced my nice sleepy baby with one that wants to feed for four hours straight.  I’m not sure if this is because there isn’t enough milk, or he’s windy, or he just wants to hang out.

I didn’t get much sleep last night.

I’ve discovered an enormous upside, though.  About the only thing I can do while breast feeding is read.  Suddenly a four hour feed doesn’t sound so bad…

Book recommendations gratefully accepted : )