mr wrigglebot

I am exhausted. Wrigglebot isn’t walking yet but he is more wriggly and fast moving than ever. It takes two people to change him easily otherwise he squirms rolls away, gets on his hands and knees and then he is off. I feel like all I do all day is chase him from room to room. More than ever Wrigglebot loves to crawl and climb naked, making getting him changed even more difficult. I get frustrated, I get annoyed but then he turns and gives me a cheeky smile and I just can’t stay annoyed at him.

I am meant to feel excited at the idea of him beginning to walk soon but in truth I am dreading it. I don’t have the energy to chase him when he will be even quicker, at the moment I have to almost break into a run to keep up with his super sonic crawling, and it will only get worse. Oh well I guess that will be our lot, he will get faster and faster and I will get slower and slower.

So I have been really slack with posting lately, quite simply I have been exhausted. The Tour de France has been on and there has been international netball on which adds up to the fact that I have been having quite a few late nights. It is also the big week of birthdays in my family, Wrigglbot’s on the 25th, my brothers on the 26th and Husband’s on the 27th. I did the mother thing, surprising myself with the cupcakes I produced for Wrigglebot’s birthday and we just had a little family gathering last night which was great. We got the obligatory video of Wrigglebot stuffing the cupcake into his mouth after staring in awe at the tea light candle in the middle of the cupcake (long story, we had to improvise the candle). All in all it was a good time had for all.

As a result of his birthday yesterday, where Wrigglebot had unprecedented amounts of sugar and even food colouring, today has been very interesting, he wont stay still, though he is asleep now so hopefully he will wake up more calm. Just an update, I had my first obstetricians appointment on Tuesday, all is fine and this baby is due on the 30th of December.

Sorry that this has been a bit everywhere but it probably reflects the state of my mind at the moment. Oh well, at least I can blame it on the pregnancy. I keep starting sentences and forgetting the endings, it is driving me mad because I think that what I am forgetting is my most brilliant self. Anyways I really need a nap right now.

Hi Chelle,
Just a small comment about the blog…why do you guys refer to each other as husband and wife? To remain anonymous? Sounds a little…1950s. That’s not a criticism, just an observation, overall I can’t help wondering where your facetious tone has gone. ‘Mum’ seems awfully placid and serene these days!
G.F. (Melbourne)

The husband thing well, I just started it and it seemed to stick. It was easier than saying ‘Simon, my husband’, all the time. I also get to avoid all of those annoying DP, DH acronyms which are so ambiguous. I think in many ways my life is an American sitcom from the 1950’s, except that I can’t cook, clean or even make a cup of decent coffee. I do have the picture postcard family in the suburbs with the front garden and the mortgage and for the most part I am happy in my traditional family. It works for me. I suppose I am quite ‘placid and serene’ these days, I think I am just catching my breath before the madness of another little one comes along.

Chelle.

If you have any letters which you would like Chelle to respond to, email her at wrigglebot@gmail.com

Yesterday I went with my sister to look at wedding dresses for her upcoming wedding and then went golfing. This left Wrigglebot with his dad for the afternoon. It was really nice to get out and of course Husband, knowing that he was going to have to be the caregiver for the  afternoon invited his sister over to play with her beautiful nephew. He carefully thought about what to give him for lunch and gave him a toasted cheese sandwich cut into bite sized pieces so he wouldn’t have to feed him and be disturbed while eating his curry laksa. Before this he tried to get some veggie shopping done but didn’t quite realise how difficult this would be with Wrigglebot in one arm and the shopping basket in the other. Hmmh, I could’ve told him how difficult it would be but we really needed some veggies.

Anyways, Wrigglebot and Husband settled down for a relaxed Sunday afternoon. They watched a movie together, a nice, appropriate movie, ‘Saving Private Ryan.’ If Wrigglebot’s first words are swear words I will not be impressed (or surprised really). After the movie they had a snack, shortbread. Now when Husband told me this I was not very happy and he said, ‘What? You give him crackers, that’s basically the same thing.’ Then it was time to call Mummy and make sure she was on her way home to make Wrigglebot some dinner and put him to bed.

I finished golf, came home to a huge mess and happily sat and listened  to the many stories of the Sunday adventures of Wrigglebot and Dad.

I feel like I am in a constant battle over sleep. I haven’t been well which has limited my patience more than usual and not being well I have been waking up every two hours for just about the past week (combination of being unable to breathe and having to go to the toilet all night, a lovely side affect of being pregnant). I said in an earlier post that I would take Wrigglebot’s sickness off him if I could, well it looks as if I did.

So anyway back to the sleep, not mine but Wrigglebot’s. He is a good sleeper with a regular two naps every day and 12-14 hours undisturbed each night. So his sleep is great except for when I am out with him and he misses a nap then for the rest of the day he is whiny and the only thing that seems to improve his mood is food, which always works.

I went out to the market this morning and he was a really good boy just looking around at everything, enjoying the sites. We got home and he did have a little nap followed by a longer one on top of me and then he started whining. He wasn’t happy being held, he wasn’t happy being on the ground, he just wasn’t happy. It just gets hards at times being such a slave to his sleep routine, oh well he is usually happy so it must work for him which is why I always try to give him his naps unless it is unavoidable.  Now he is fed, in bed and asleep and tomorrow is a new day that will definitely contain two naps.

These are the top two things that annoy me right now and I know that all of you are going to be nodding your head at these.

The first is telemarketers who call. That is annoying but even more annoying is when they call just when Wrigglebot is beginning to doze off. It is as if they have special intuition for the most inconvenient time to call. Of course they wake a dozing Wrigglebot and I have to begin the process of naptime all over again. I am not adverse to all phone surveys, in fact I will do the odd survey if it is for a good cause, violence against women, for example. When I was first home alone with Wrigglebot I would do any survey just to pass the time and have someone to talk to, perhaps that is why they call now. So telemarketers annoy me when they call at awkward times.

Even more annoying than telemarketers are people who come to your door trying to sell you stuff. A man, or rather pimply faced teenager, came yesterday, Wrigglebot had just gone down for his nap, I had just gone down for my nap, I’m a little sick at the moment but I usually have naps anyway so it is not an unusual occurrence. There was a knock on the door. I got up, put my pants on and went to the door. They never start telling you what they are selling but they begin with a question, ‘What are the floor coverings in your house?’ At this point I cut him off unwilling to get into a protracted conversation, ‘I’m sick, I need to go to bed’ I said and began to shut the door but not before I heard him say, ‘Cos I knew that!’ in a sarcastic manner. I shut the door and thought, maybe I was a little rude but then I remembered, I hadn’t asked him to come, I didn’t want new floor coverings and even if I did I would take the initiative to go to a shop not wait for someone to come to my house. Do they think we are so lazy and easily persuaded that we wold buy new flooring off a pimply faced teenager who comes to our door? I think not. So to end this off do you think it would be rude of me to put a sign on my front door saying that if I require a service I have full mobility and am capable of going to a shop or calling someone myself?

So we are back from our week away. Each time we go away now I become aware that  Wrigglebot is  only almost one and so there are a lot of things that he has never seen or experienced. He has never seen snow, he has never been to the beach, he has never seen the sun rise or a shooting star.

We went to the country and we crossed some things off of his to do list. He saw cows, he smelt the bush, he ate green jelly and he rode a goat (with some assistance obviously). All of these experiences are new for him yet instead of cowering away he observed for a while before reaching out to experience them more fully. It is such an exciting time thinking that he is seeing all of these amazing things for the first time and these are things that don’t cost anything to see they don’t even take that much effort but they enthrall him, a goat is fairly memorable when the only moving creatures you have seen are cats and dogs and chooks.

I’m thinking we might go to the museum soon and continue the constant education and orientation of the Wrigglebot there, we will get to see butterflies and insects and kangaroos and dinosaurs and hearts and computers and a rainforest and trains and a big horse and…