The Little One is starting to pull himself up on things and invariably fall down again. He cries and then he gets over it but I have been remembering all of those little falls and the little bruises that appear as they begin to learn to walk. And then I had a shower and saw all of the bruises on me. I am a little accident prone at the moment. For no apparent reason I have been bumping my head, walking into walls, even turning and hitting my nose on doors. It’s weird I know, I seem to have lost my spacial awareness. It may be the lack of sleep, although that has been getting a little better lately, it may be walking to the kids in the middle of the night, it may be the curse of having your kids in bunk-beds. All I know is I am sore and hoping this accident prone condition is not permanent. At least it has given me a greater empathy for The Little One because some times bumping your head does really hurt and not even a hug can stop you crying.

I have vivid memories of Mum licking her fingers and then attacking my face with said wet, slobbery fingers in an effort to remove some dirt, or lipstick, or dried food or even dried snot. I hated it. This is probably why now, if I have food on my face while I am eating I don’t wipe until I am finished my meal. It seems like a waste of time to me and an annoyance, and so it stays, much to everybody else’s annoyance who seem to all be subtly scratching their cheeks on the left side.

And now we come to my kids, I never thought I would care but I just can’t seem to help myself. I know it will probably make them cry, but when I see that dried snot on their cheek or drinking chocolate on the bridge of their nose, I have to get it off. And so in an effort to minimise their crying and my annoyance I have honed my skills till only one pick, scratch or scrub is required to remove the blemish. When I thought about the skills I would need as a mother this wasn’t even on the radar but what an advantage to have picked up this skill, I mean there must be plenty of jobs for efficient dried snot removal, right?

Squirm has taken to choosing her own clothes. We have a system, she can choose her top and I can choose her pants and whatever goes underneath said top. Needless to say there have been a lot of tutus being worn lately and I’ve begun to ignore the raised eyebrows when we go out. I don’t mind so much except that sometimes I worry about developing a fashion consciousness way too early, maybe this is a bit of an overstatement as what she wears could hardly be described as high fashion.

This is what happens though, she chooses a dress to wear to church. She gets lots of comments, ‘What a pretty girl’, ‘What a beautiful dress’, ‘That looks like a great dancing dress’ and she smiles precociously,  twirls or shows them her shiny black shoes and then comes the next day. The next day she remembers all the fuss over the ‘pretty’ dress and she wants to wear it again and I have to explain that crushed silk just isn’t appropriate for tree climbing and chook chasing. And so she cries and we find another ‘pretty’ top, emphasis on ‘pretty’ and the mother in me who never wanted her to be indoctrinated by Disney princesses cries.

When my kids couldn’t talk, or were only saying basic words, I couldn’t wait for them to say that they loved me. I did everything for them surely it couldn’t be that long before they reciprocated the words that I always said to them, I mean they pick up on all the bad words quickly enough why not, ‘I love you.’ And so I waited and now Wrigglebot says that he loves me all the time much to my delight except… at three o’clock in the morning.

He calls out, ‘Mummy, Mummy!’ in his loudest voice and I rush in sure that he has fallen out of bed or swallowed his pillow or been attacked by a mammoth spider, but no. He simply says, ‘Mummy, I love you.’ And at that moment he is not cute at all. I am not a loving mother. I do not want to hear ‘I love you’. I want sleep. Sometimes he changes it up, ‘Mummy, Mummy’ again I stumble half dressed into his room, ‘I’m sleeping fine,’ he says and I am angry.

I’m sorry when it seems like I’m too busy with other things to truly admire your new artwork. I’m sorry when I’m so tired that you literally have to pull me out of bed in the morning. I’m sorry that sometimes I can’t play with you all day. I’m sorry that I don’t always want to read the same book five times in a row or watch dinosaur movies continually.

Thank you for making me laugh at your dancing and stories. Thank you for letting me cook with you, garden with you, jump on the trampoline and ride bikes with you. Thank you for teaching me how to be a more patient and loving person. Thank you for giving my days greater purpose. Thank you for thinking that I am the greatest person ever, the person who can fix every hurt. This will change, I know, but I’m enjoying it for now. Thank you for lots of hugs and kisses, I will always come ‘fast, right on the double.’ I cannot imagine you three not in my life and I am incredibly proud of you all. You are in almost all of my conversations because I talk about what I love.

Keep learning new things, keep loving people, keep laughing, keep playing. One day we will all realise that our family isn’t normal, we are blessed. We are blessed by having each other and having time for each other. Enough mushiness, let’s go build a cave.

It seems like it has been raining here continuously for two weeks, we are going a little insane inside, but here is what we were working on outside before we were so rudely interrupted…

A veggie garden, at the moment we are just preparing the soil ready to plant in Spring. The kids love it, they have their gardening equipment and constantly want to go outside to work. It gets even more fun as it gets more wet and there is more mud involved. Fun for all the family, including the little one who just wants to be outside and stare down the chook.

So Husband and I were talking the other day about children. That’s what we do now. Pre-kids Husband used to talk about bands and I would nod like I knew what he was talking about, and I would talk about books and he would nod as if he really would read that book, but now we have kids so we talk about kids. Anyways we were ruminating on children and parenthood and he said, ‘That’s what I love about kids’, I said ‘What?’ sure that I had missed some great pearl of wisdom, he continued ‘the fact that every six months you get a new surprise.’

I thought on this for a while and after I realised he wasn’t talking about having a new baby every six months, which would be a nightmare, I understood.  Roughly every six months brings a new change; they can do more, they can express their personalities more, they grow into themselves a little more. It’s like we’re playing pass the parcel and each six months we can unwrap a new layer. Sometimes it’s a dodgy layer, you know the one where a roll of toilet paper falls out but other times you score and it’s a slinky.  I enjoy the fun and adventure of seeing my kids grow, even when that means they have to go through being two, because there is so much more exciting things to come and hopefully a lot more slinky than toilet paper layers.

Wrigglebot had his kinder readiness session yesterday. Now of course, I know my child is advanced but I was concerned about whether others would feel the same way. I walked into the room, Wrigglebot clung to my leg, we were off to a good start. He wouldn’t let go of me for a good ten minutes but then I walked away and sat with the other concerned mothers while he threaded beads and displayed his good manners and  intellect. The aim was that the mothers sat in a corner, in the naughty chairs so it seemed, while the kids interacted, without a mother secretly doing their ‘play’ for them because I know that I could stick and colour just a little more impressively than Wrigglebot, not that he’s not good, I’m just a little better but I guess my turn comes when he gets homework.

And so we sat and had a cup of tea without interruption and cunningly sized each other up, ‘What extra activities does your child do? My child loves to cook, mine loves to build- bird houses are his specialty, my child never watches TV she just draws and writes stories. Terribly advanced aren’t they?’ Of course I said Wrigglebot could program a computer and build the Eiffel Tower out of leggo. We all knew we were exaggerating but education is a competitive thing these days and it wont be long before they are getting that ENTER score and finding jobs and so as mothers we do our best to intimidate the competition, to get any little advantage we can. The game has begun.

I often feel like a broken record because when people ask me how I am my automatic response is always ‘tired’ and that’s because I feel tired most of the time. I remember after I had Squirm, so two children, I was so continuously tired that I went to the doctor to see if something was wrong. She did all the blood tests which were normal and then told me that of course I was tired I had two kids under the age of two. Just a little warning, here comes an extremely condescending statement to those of you who don’t have kids; you don’t know what tired really is until you have kids. There is no catch up sleep; if you miss it, it is gone forever. You are tired when you get up, after lunch, when you go to bed and in the middle of the night. And when you do sleep it is never deep. I have been waking up to the neighbour’s newborn who is as quiet as a cat purring outside the window, I guess I am just programmed now to jump to attention at the sound of a child crying.

I am starting to realise that being tired is no anomaly that excuses inaction (I know it has taken me a while to get to this point.) And so I have a new plan, I’m going to pretend. I’m going to pretend that I’ve had eight hours of continuous sleep when I get up in the morning, pretend that I have energy to do all the things that need to be done and play with the kids, pretend that I have patience from being well rested. So if you ask me how I am I will probably say ‘good’ because if I pretend hard enough that I am not tired then maybe, just maybe it might be so, but just to be on the safe side please don’t call me after 9.

Wrigglebot: Mum come help me go to do wees.

Me: No, you can do it by yourself.

W: Help, help, oh no! Mummy I had troubles.

Me: What troubles?

W: I couldn’t get my pants done and did wees in my pants and undies. Adults don’t have troubles.

Me: Really?

W: Yes only kids, boys and girls.

Me: What troubles are they?

W: When we do wees in our pants. Winsome has lots of troubles.

Oh how I wish this were true and our only troubles were kids wetting pants.