Happy birthday, little guy!

I was never a pet-names kinda gal before my son came along. My husband has always been “Alan” or “Al” rather than “sweetie” or “babe,” and though I envied friends who could sound perfectly natural saying, “Alright, honey, I’ll talk to you soon!” or ”Hey, darls! How are you?”, I never felt comfortable trying it for myself. And then, less than 24 hours after my son’s birth, without thinking about it at all, I heard myself calling him “my darling,” and have not been able to stop since. He’s still most often “my darling,” although he’s also (among others) “buddy,” “little man,” ”dude,” “Moo” and “stinky poo boy,” depending on what comes to mind first (and the state of his nappy).

Me: "Show me your happy face!"

Me: "Now show me your sad face."

Moses is two today. This is fortuitous because “two” is the only number he responds to number-related questions with, so when we ask him how old he is now he sounds clever by saying “TWO!”, but it’s actually the exact same answer he’d give if asked, “What time is it?” or “How many grains of sand are there on this beach?”. I love this languagey stage of his life, although now that he cares whether or not I understand him it can be stressful at times. For some words I have to go through a list of potentials (“Sit? Dig?”), then when I finally get it (“STICK!”) he yells, “Yeah!” and gives me a smile so huge and relieved that I feel like that guess was the best thing I’ve done all day; I can glow with that kind of achievement for a full hour or so. He’s repeating everything and playing around with creating his own sentences, which the linguist in me finds fascinating and the mum in me finds amusing:

(Having just tried to dive on Dadda’s head WWF-style, but landing on his chest instead): “I miss!”

(Carrying two paint cans as bags): “I shop!”

(Banging on table/box/floor/car/actual drum with fork and spoon/sticks/carrots/hands/actual drumsticks): “I drum!”

(Pulling on his seatbelt with a pained expression, while I’m driving): “I stuck!”

He’s still affectionate, cheeky and inquisitive. He has a thousand different facial expressions which he puts to good use when telling stories or doing voices for his Duplo people. He loves hiding behind doors and then jumping out and saying “RAH!” at people (we/they act surprised, and he laughs) - we play this game every night before bed at the moment. He’s a champion soccer player and ball-catcher, and I’m not just saying that because I’m his mother (his completely-unbiased grandmother says so too). He loves dirt. He loves poo. He loves being with people; he waves at strangers and follows other kids around at the park, joining in their games as if they were all old mates. He loves olives and kiwi fruit and zucchini slice. My husband is envious of the way he can bend notes when playing the harmonica.

He loves his doll, who we named Holly but he renamed Meek. He loves Play School and “hole biscuits“ (donut-shaped rice cookies) - before his day sleep he asks for both and I remind him that he can have them when he wakes up; before his night sleep he asks about them again and we assure him that there will be hole biscuits and Play School tomorrow, too. He loves singing together:

Me: Here is the sea/The wavy sea/Here is a boat/And here is...
Mo: Meeeee!
Me: All of the fishes/Way down below/Wiggle their tails/And away they...
Mo: Basketball!

And he loves his birthday trucks. We took him to a toy shop to check out the prices of scooters and tricycles and think about maybe buying one for him, but he was far more interested in some plastic diggers he saw at the entrance, so we bought him a few of them instead. With a staff discount (thanks to my cousin, who works there) they cost $7.20. He takes them everywhere now.

In the immortal words of Savage Garden, I truly madly deeply love this kid.

You know those scenes in movies where someone in bed opens their eyes and yawns a bit and then asks the person next to them if they’ve been awake for long, and the other person says something like, “It’s okay, I was just watching you sleep”, at which point you reach for a bucket in which to vomit because gooey romance triggers your gag reflex? Who watches someone sleep?! Recently Mo’s been waking too early from his daytime nap and then spending the afternoon being cranky and annoying, but I’ve worked out that if I take him to my bed and lie down with him when it’s clear he’s still tired, he usually falls asleep again. And I watch him sleep. His cheeks are like magnets that my lips find it hard to keep from kissing, and, though my arm may fall asleep and my back may ache, I will stay in whatever position he’s most comfortable in so as not to disturb his rest.

Of motherhood, Caitlin Moran writes (on page227 of How to be a Woman):

You...observe yourself from a distance, simply astounded by the quantities of love you manufacture. It is endless. Your adoration may grow weary but it will never end: it becomes the fuel of your head, your body and your heart. It powers you through the pouring rain, delivering forgotten raincoats for lunch-time play; works overtime, paying for shoes and puppets; keeps you up all night, easing cough, fever and pain – like lust used to, but much, much stronger.

This may all seem a little mushy, but I realised recently that as the sole photographer in our family and therefore the one not in most photos with Mo, posts like these may be all he has to remember me by one day, and I want to make sure they’re the equivalent of the hundreds of pictures I’ve taken of him having a blast with my husband. So to my son, my darling, the one for whom I have given thanks to God (almost) every day over the last two years: Happy birthday. I love you completely. And, just so you know, you and I have just as much fun as you and Dad look like you’re having in all of those photos, if not more.

Surnames

from here

Here’s something that I’ve been chewing on for no particular reason lately:

In the chapter on marriage in How to be a Woman, Caitlin Moran says this (from page 194): “When else do you get named something else? On joining a nunnery, or becoming a porn star. As an ostensibly joyful celebration of love, that’s bad company to be in.”

But here’s what I’ve been finding confusing (it doesn’t even affect me! Why, brain? WHYYYYY?!): women who - for damn-the-patriarchy reasons - refuse to change their surname when they marry usually have no problem keeping their original surname, WHICH IS THEIR FATHER’S SURNAME, thus continuing the whole patrilineal thing for at least their generation. AND some of those women also go on to give their children their husband’s name. The only way to get out of the system, therefore, (for those who want to) is to either change one’s surname upon signing up to feminism or to sit with one’s husband-to-be and a phone book* and pick one you both love.

Free advice. And tonight I’ll be able to fall asleep slightly faster.

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*And, possibly, if you really want to think ahead, a baby names book to make sure that your current favourites match any potential new surname. If you’ve always loved the name Tom, for example, it helps not to have the surname Morrow. You’re welcome.

Book spine poetry

Meandering around the internet last night led me here and then here, where I was inspired by this very cool response to a book spine poetry challenge:

In case it wasn't clear, this picture's from here

On seeing this, my husband immediately shuffled off to our bookshelf and returned with this (as well as a determination to “buy any second hand book that has a verb in the title”):

The lighting is a little dodgy; it says:

The prince

the little prince

burning for revenge

in a sunburned country

The idiot

the idiot

looking for Alibrandi

in the company of cheerful ladies

And I, being far less poetically-able than any of the above, came up with this:

Glasses

I spent most of my teen years wishing I had glasses (with tortoise-shell frames) so that I’d look sophisticated and intelligent. I now have to wear glasses all the time and have come to realise that appearing sophisticated and intelligent is overrated and that the grass was waaaaay greener on the other side. (At least I think it was, I can’t see that far anymore to check.) Glasses are annoying for many reasons - they don’t have windscreen wipers but do get rained on, they steam up when you’re washing dishes or pulling something out of the oven, and little boys seem to find ways of smudging the lenses less than a minute after you’ve finished meticulously cleaning them. All of these things – rain, steam, smudges – make it far harder to see than if you weren’t wearing glasses at all, which is both ironic and bothersome. Glasses are bothersome. 

They’re also very hard to shop for when you’re short-sighted, because unless you think ahead and wear contact lenses, you can’t actually see what the pair of frames really looks like on you without either standing 10cm from the mirror (EMBARRASSING! And also not accurate, because how many people will be checking out your face from that distance?) or taking a photo (POSER! And also not accurate because you’ll be putting on your photo face and therefore not looking like everyday-you).

On top of all of these hassles, the pair you choose will say a great deal about who you are just by sitting astride your nose; you have to choose the frames that will not only send the right message for every day of your non-contacts-wearing life but match most of your wardrobe. It’s tough, I tells ya! In How to be a Woman, Caitlin Moran explains that in today’s world a woman’s fashion choices are expected to say something about who she is, and that “When a woman says, ‘I have nothing to wear!’, what she really means is, ‘There’s nothing here for who I’m supposed to be today’” (from page 211). I have this problem with my glasses. I used to wear a pair of purple ones which were perfect in every way, but then one lunchtime at soccer training I stopped the ball with my face, which proved to be a very bad idea not only because it left my perfect purple spectacles in a crumpled, lens-less mess, but also because it really, really hurt.

To replace them, I went for a twofer deal and, after lots of trying on and photo-taking, decided on a sensible black pair for everyday wear, as well as a funky and chunky blue pair for the days that I was feeling particularly hip. This arrangement worked very well for me until my husband recently stepped on my black glasses, leaving me with no choice but to be funky EVERY SINGLE DAY. It’s tiring, quite frankly, and unsustainable. I honestly don’t know how some people do it. I’m due for an updated eye test, but a new prescription will be bittersweet news: yes, I’ll be able to have sensible days once again, but first I’ll have to go through the drama of shops and hundreds of frames and photos and “What do you think?”s before finding the pair that best captures who I think I want to be for the next 3 years.

If only I could go back in time and wish for something a bazillion times better than issues with my eyesight...

Four of the things I love about Glenmore Park

ONE

The clover is HAPPY, possibly because it’s on drugs (do steroids make you happy?). Not only is a lot of it ridiculously large, I have also found approximately 9 four-leaf clovers since we’ve lived here, which I’m persisting in taking as a good sign despite the fact that they’re obviously not as rare (and therefore magical) as they used to be.

TWO

A five minute walk from our house (assuming Moses is in the pram rather than poo-spotting) will get us to a pretty pond on which ducks and water birds and a goose float around waiting for us to show up with crusts (this probably isn’t true). We stand at the edge of the water and I tear up pieces of bread and throw some to the birds and some to Moses, all of whom snack merrily. It’s an outing that consistently leaves me feeling blessed and content, so we go at least once a week.

THREE

A few months ago now, Moses and I were at the local park and a kangaroo bounded by. A KANGAROO! BOUNDING! IN THE PARK!

FOUR

I whined about the roads before we moved here, but I’ve since found out that they were actually not designed by a drunkard but were in fact made bendy on purpose, in order to slow down the traffic. Glenmore Park has aged my driving by approximately 50 years. I’ve discovered the joys of watching the world pass by at only 40km per hour, finding myself doing this speed even on straight streets in other suburbs.

I may have been too harsh on Glenmore Park when we first moved here; now that I can find my way home from both entrances I’m starting to think maybe it’d be nice to stay here forever.

Fire

You know that thing where life punches you in the guts and leaves you doubled over, wondering what the hell just happened, and you can’t bring yourself to talk to God about it because you’re not entirely sure how much God’s related to the fact that you’re finding it hard to breathe right now, but you pick up The King Jesus Gospel by Scot McKnight hoping that it’ll remind you of the simple truths that can be known, and you realise, at the end of it, that the funny feeling in your tummy is your soul waking up for the first time in a long while?*

And then you find Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell at a church bookstall and the blurb intrigues the $2 out of you, and you take it home and read it and your freshly-awakened soul ignites as if it’d been drooling petrol while it slept, and you realise that God’s answered the prayers you never prayed and then everything in you wants to celebrate and sing praises to your Creator and shout this glorious news from the top of high hills and give everything you own to the poor and foster babies and not eat cakes and avoid Woolworths and Coles and love as hard as it’s possible to love in your little corner of the world?

You know?

Well, that.

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* Those who read this post in January will remember that this is not the first time a book by McKnight has had this effect on me.