in a garden... somewhere

Paddle pool

2012-01-17T17:25:00.003+11:00

It was 35 degrees (Celsius) today. Fortunately I finally bought a paddle pool last week.

I think it would be stating the obvious to say that the kids like it.

Bedtime appears to have gone out the window

2012-01-16T19:16:00.001+11:00

Bother

Division of labour

2012-01-02T21:41:00.001+11:00

I have long believed that a happy partnership means that both partners have to contribute fairly equally to the household and that no one should be left with the worst job of all: monitoring the other's contribution.

To make this possible I think a fairly clear division of labour can help to reduce the amount of boring negotiations over household chores.

This is roughly how we have come to divide ours (for now, obviously things will change as kids grow etc):

Me:
Meal planning
Cooking & food prep
Food shopping
Gift planning & buying
Daytime clean up (including dishes - although he often does breakfast ones before work)
Schedules (ours & kids)
Breastfeeding
Charlie nighttime parenting
Weekday at home parenting work

Him:
Evening clean up (including dishes)
Paid work
Bill paying
Banking
Mail sorting, dealing with contents
Lily nighttime parenting, including story & bedtime
Driving (when we're together)
IT troubleshooting

Both:
Gardening
Constant tidying
Holiday planning & booking
Parenting
Bathroom cleaning
Laundry (but he does far more than me)
Household shopping
Farmers market shopping

Of course sometimes he cooks or shops for food, and sometimes I clean up in the evening or do the banking, but this is the general pattern.

Do you have a pattern at your place or do you tend to alternate more?

NY Resolutions 2012

2012-01-02T10:07:00.001+11:00

Practice yoga weekly

Take a daily walk

Learn to meditate & practice daily

Write more

Finish PhD

Read more books & keep a reading journal

Find the time to volunteer (@ Fitzroy legal centre?)

Eat more raw food

Be more grateful

Keep decluttering/simplifying

Help others more often

Cycle more, drive less

Stick with meal planning

Be kinder, especially with my family & self

Stop reading drivel/hateful opinion pieces/the comments on news sites

Eat far less sugar

Stop mindlessly checking email, twitter & Facebook

Stop using canned food

Christmas 2011

2011-12-29T14:53:00.001+11:00

Our Christmas was full on and over-the-top, as usual, and the kids had a ball, as usual.

Every year I oscillate between acceptance and panic as the scale of our Christmas(es) with our many large, boisterous & excessively generous families dawns on me.

Every year, at some point, I try to hatch plans for what we could do less of; how we could reduce the avalanche of gifts; how it could be contained, somehow. And every year, at some point, I watch the sheer joy that it brings the kids and I surrender.

I have yet to find a balance...

Melbourne - 3 month review

2011-12-18T19:28:00.001+11:00

So it's been three months since we moved to Melbourne. That went fast!

I have to admit to having been very reluctant to move down here from Canberra. It wasn't that Melbourne didn't sound like a great city, with interesting laneways, good food, community gardens, lots of bikes, crafty people & markets, etc.

It was just that Canberra was working for me. We have a great group of friends - many with kids. My mothers group is awesome. Lil loved her school and has some truly excellent friends. We have heaps of family in Canberra and they gave us a lot of help and support - as well as being good company... I really didn't want to leave all that to move to a place where we knew no one (especially for Paul to start a job that involved a ton of international travel).

And yet... It has actually gone pretty well.

We've landed in a great spot. I really like our neighbourhood and I think we may live in one of the friendly streets around.

Our immediate neighbours are lovely. The people next door have a 3yo boy, which thrills Lily, and they are super friendly (we just got home from a Xmas party at their house actually).

Next door to them are a couple who just moved to Melbourne, to spend more time with their granddaughters. They look after their two grandchildren (2yo and 4yo) twice a week and we now have a regular Monday playdate, which Lil looks forward to all week. Last Monday her and the 4yo played for five hours straight with no arguments. They were in and out of our houses and backyards. At one point we had them out on the footpath with bikes, scooters and toys. We were shortly joined by the woman who lives a few doors down and her two young kids and then by the next door neighbour and her 3yo. A spontaneous street playgroup! It was lovely.

The rest of the street is also friendly. Lots of people sit on their front porch and say 'hi' when you pass. Like K who lives a few doors down who invited Paul & Lil in for cookies and her life story, and told us to help ourselves to her lemon tree. She's lived here for 50 years, having moved into the house on arrival from Italy. Or V down the road who has lived here for 40 years (also from Italy). She often stops Charlie and I for a chat when we go out for our evening stroll.

The street has a Christmas party every year. They close off part of the street and people drag out tables, chairs, bbqs, music equipment, food, etc. they even hung a 'chandelier' this year. We went along with a gingerbread house to share (& dinner, dips & sparkling wine). Everyone was friendly. One person took Lil & I into their backyard to pick raspberries and told us to help ourselves anytime. Another proudly showed me his clumping bamboo. Lily made friends with some 'big girls' who played with her very caringly. It was a great night.

Beyond our street I've joined a new mothers group and it's truly fabulous. Everyone is so supportive and friendly, and, as a bonus, they all practice AP, which is pretty cool for me.

Plus Lil starts a new school next year and after four weeks of orientation I'm happy to report that I think it's a winner. One of the women from my new mothers group has kids at the school, including a daughter who will be starting with Lil. Last week we sat up the back of the info session and talked like naughty school kids. Old habits die hard.

Finally, well, Melbourne is actually a cool city. We have a cute cafe around the corner from our house that does great coffee and food. And this is normal! The food is good. The little shops are fun. The laneways downtown are cute... Plus there is cool stuff for the kids like the Collingwood Childrens Farm, the Zoo, kid space at the NGV, ArtPlay, etc...

So yeah. It's going better than I expected. Not that I don't miss everyone in Canberra...

Food diary - day 7

2011-12-18T10:19:00.001+11:00

Last one!

Muesli, strawberries, blueberries & soy milk
Coffee with soy x 2
Banana, strawberry, cashew & almond smoothie
Toast with tahini & tomato
Original 'Lord of the Fries' burger (veganised)
Blood orange spring water thingy
Raw brownie
Pasta salad with tomato, snow peas, asparagus, avocado, lemon juice & olive oil
Mango, pineapple, strawberries & blueberries
Tofu
Half a mini vegan chocolate cupcake

Food diary - day 6

2011-12-16T21:20:00.001+11:00

Muesli, strawberries, blueberries & soy milk
Soy milk coffee x 2
Banana, strawberry, cashew & almond smoothie
Small tofu & salad sandwich (too small!)
Raw brownie
Spirulina & berry smoothie
Black bean burrito (@ Las Vegan)
Soy yogurt
4 x Orgran animal crackers
hot chocolate (soy milk)

Food diary - day 5

2011-12-15T20:49:00.001+11:00

(I'm only doing 7 of these. Sorry! I know they're boring)

Muesli, strawberries, blueberries & soy milk
Coffee & soy milk x 3
1.5 tofu & brown rice patties
Slice of raw mousse cake (@ Foxy Brown Espresso)
Fried rice (black sticky rice) with tempeh & heaps of veggies
Soy yogurt with mango, banana & strawberries
Chai with soy milk

Food diary - day 4

2011-12-14T21:21:00.001+11:00

Two slices of Vegemite toast
Two cups of coffee with soy milk
One raw brownie
One tofu & brown rice patty
One scoop of raw cashew ice cream
One soy milk hot chocolate
Penne with eggplant, mushrooms, zucchini, olives & tomatoes
Two slices of toast with almond, brazil & cashew butter
Chai with soy milk

Food diary - day 3

2011-12-13T21:50:00.001+11:00

Oat brix, muesli, strawberries & soy milk
Coffee with soy milk
Homemade bliss ball (almonds, dates, tahini, coconut & raw cocoa)
Black tea
Leftover lentil & quinoa salad
Ryevita with Vegemite
Slice of bread with hummus
Corn thin with hummus
2nd bliss ball
Vanilla tea with soy milk
2 x tofu & brown rice patties with baby spinach, carrot, tomato, avocado & aoli
Raw brownie
Chai with honey and soy milk

Food diary, day two

2011-12-12T21:41:00.001+11:00

Please ignore these unless you're particularly bored. It's just a handy way of keeping track for me. I'm trying to avoid losing weight too fast while breastfeeding Charlie (the way I did with Lil).

Bowl of muesli with blueberries, strawberries & soy milk
Mug of coffee with soy milk
Second coffee
Banana, almond, tahini, date and protein powder smoothie
1 chocolate-coated wheaten biscuit
2 (or 3?) ryevitas with Vegemite
Handful of seaweed crackers
Puy lentil, quinoa, parsley, tomato & avocado salad with lemon juice & olive oil
Dark chocolate & blueberry Carmans muesli bar
Raw brownie
Mug of chai with soy milk

(Lots of snack food today. Need to get more organised so I don't have to eat on the run...)

A day of food

2011-12-11T21:07:00.001+11:00

A mug of chai with soy milk & honey
2 oatbrix with peaches & soy milk
Coffee with soy milk
A banana, almond, tahini & date smoothie with protein powder
2 pieces of toast with almond, brazil nut & cashew butter
1 ryevita with Vegemite
1 mug of chai with soy milk
2 sourdough rye wraps filled with tempeh, kidney beans, red capsicum, grated carrot, guacamole, tomatoes and baby spinach
1 Carmans dark chocolate & blueberry muesli bar

Does that seem like a lot to you? I can't work out how to eat more without eating crap...

Letter to Charlie - 14 months

2011-12-11T12:31:00.003+11:00

Dear Charlie

Last week you turned 14 months old. It feels as though you have really turned a corner and are now a fully-fledged toddler. You walk, you run, you climb, you explore and you communicate - though not so much with fully-formed words as yet.

As usual with these huge developmental leaps, it has been so fascinating to see more of your personality emerge as you have learned all these new skills over the last two months. You have a very keen (cheeky) sense of humour and it is a lot of fun to see you use it to make yourself and others laugh. You still have a fantastic laugh!

You are really into music and rhythm. Lily has been keen on Mary Poppins lately and you started copying her 'tap dancing' to Step In Time. Now it is your thing. When you hear some groovy music, or even hear someone say 'Step In Time' you tend to launch into a full tap dancing routine. You do it with such intense concentration and your little legs move incredibly fast. It is almost unbearably cute. You also love to hear us sing and have recently discovered which books contain songs that when presented to adult will lead to singing. Last night you snuggled up on my lap and insisted that I read/sing a song book of about 20 songs to you four time in a row. I was only able to stop when you starting dropping off against my shoulder. You were captivated.

Papa had to go to Africa for work recently and your grandparents came down to stay with us for a while. When Grandma Meg was here and Lil was at preschool we walked around the corner with you to our local cafe. I let you walk the whole way since you clearly didn't want to be carried and it seemed to open up a world of possibility in your mind. Since then you have been on ready alert for the front gate to open. When it does you try to shoot out so that you can go for a stroll in the neighbourhood. I often let you and just follow along behind you. You like to stop and the pick flowers the grow out from under the fences and generally give the street a fairly close inspection. I can see why you are keen on it.

Another passion of yours is watering the plants (and the pavers, the trampoline, yourself...). As soon as we get outside (which you beg to do as soon as you get up) you trot over and grab a watering can. If it has rained the night before you then use it to collect water from the cover of your sandpit. Otherwise you bring it to me (or Papa), saying "More?" until we fill it up for you from the tap. You generally start out by watering the veggies, but within minutes you also manage to water yourself thoroughly. It has certainly increased the laundry pile a bit, but you enjoy it so much that I can't bring myself to refuse.

As always Charlie, it's been a pleasure hanging out with you. Your sunny, calm disposition brings a lovely balance to our household and it is so fun to watch you explore and learn so many new things every day.

love,
mama
xo

Graduation

2011-12-09T09:59:00.001+11:00

Lil's preschool did a graduation concert yesterday. They dressed the kids up in caps and gowns, which was hilarious, if a little odd. Lil thought it was excellent.

Lil has also been doing a few practice sessions at her school in preparation for next year. While she's in her classroom I've been up in the library with the other parents hearing about what they'll do next year.

It's really making it hit home that we're about to have a school-age child. How on earth did that happen?

Creamy cashew dressing

2011-12-07T12:33:00.001+11:00

I'm currently obsessed with this dressing. It's truly delicious and very easy to make.

1/2 cup of cashews (preferably soaked first, but it's ok if they're not)
The juice of one lemon
1 tsp lemon zest
2/3 cup water
1/4 cup olive oil
Sea salt to taste

Blend all the ingredients together until smooth and creamy. Adjust water for desired consistency.

The better your blender, the smoother it will be, but cashews are fortunately pretty soft (especially when soaked).

Use on salads or sandwiches.

Yum.

Christmas is coming

2011-12-06T20:47:00.001+11:00

Lil has overcome her fear of Santa and is now all about him. She wrote him a letter and posted it in a special post box downtown. In it she asked for some new textas, a pen to write on boxes with, and a bucket and spade for Charlie. Joke's on me for buying her a camera!

Paul went to Africa for work and my parents came down to help us out (one at a time). While Dad was down he took her into Myer to meet Santa. She got to ride on 'Santa's train' after lining up for fifty million years. Apparently it was worth it.

On Saturday our new street held its annual Christmas party. They closed the street and people brought out tables, chairs and bbqs. There were also bands playing and children zooming around on bikes and scooters. We made a gingerbread house for the occasion. Lil was in heaven. Our neighbours are truly lovely.

On Sunday we went downtown again to 'Christmas Square' and Lil met Santa again. We got our photo taken (for free hurray) and he gave Lil some stickers and a DVD. She wanted to go back and see him again immediately.

I feel totally unprepared for Christmas this year. I'm hoping my brain will start to get on top of it fairly soon...

School

2011-11-22T16:02:00.001+11:00

Lil had her first practice morning of school today. They made Barley Cake.

She loved it and adores her new teacher. I'm so relieved and happy for her.

Last week

2011-11-19T21:50:00.001+11:00

We went to the Zoo. The orangutangs were singing very loudly.

Charlie watered many plants.

Lil did some painting.

Charlie discovered that he quite likes raw fudge.

Flower girl

2011-11-15T14:46:00.005+11:00

My cousin asked Lily to be a flower girl in her wedding the other week. It was a lovely day.

Letter to Charlie - 12 months

2011-10-25T11:14:00.004+11:00

Dear Charlie

You are almost 13 months old now. It has taken me so long to write your letter.

The last few months have been a bit of a blur, Charlie. We packed up our house in Canberra, stayed with your grandmas and then moved down to Melbourne. As if all that wasn't enough, right when we were about to settle in to our new place and host a little birthday party for you, I scooped you up and flew back to Canberra to spend some time with your great-grandfather before he died. And so, quite unexpectedly, you spent your first birthday with family after-all (but no party).

Your Uncle Jono also travelled to Canberra to see Papa Phil, and Aunty Nattie and your big cousin Amira came with him. You and Amira had a fantastic time playing together. Watching someone almost your age (well, exactly twice your age, as it happens) walking around seemed to inspire you and so you took your first steps the day after your birthday. Your Grandpa and your other Great-Grandparents got to watch too, which was nice.

You continue to be a sunny, happy little person Charlie. You love to laugh and to make other people laugh with you. You love to eat and have become very adept at feeding yourself up in your high chair. You now rarely tip your food everywhere until you have become bored with it. You also love to drink water, which I think is fabulous. You love music and will often sing along to tunes that take your fancy. You love your big sister, although you do think that hitting her is a good way of starting play and she isn't so sure about that.

You are obsessed with being outdoors. You beg to go outside immediately upon waking. You are most fond of digging in your sandpit, but enjoying being pushed on the swing or crawling about on the trampoline with Lil (or digging up the veggie patch, eating dirt, filling the watering can full of gravel, trying to ride the little bike, pushing the cart around, banging things on your tool bench, etc.).

You are also quite obsessed with birds, especially crows, and would watch them all day if given the opportunity. When we stayed with your grandmas they had a crow that had become a little focused on pecking their bedroom window. For them this was annoying, but for you it was fantastic. You beg constantly to be taken to the window to watch for this crow, saying "Aaah Aaah" and pointing furiously towards that end of the house. Your grandmas were most obliging and took you on many birds hunts, both indoors and out. Now when you see them you also expect to see birds. "Aaah Aaah?" you will say and virtually leap into their arms. My Mum has started calling herself "Bird girl" as a result.

Although you took your first steps a few weeks ago it wasn't until the other night that you worked out how to actually walk. Something clicked in your head and you figured out how to stand up unassisted, to walk, to stop, to turn around and then to keep walking again. The look on your little face was priceless. You were so pleased, so proud. I love those moments.

You haven't been quite so focused on language and don't really have many more words than you did at 10 months. Although you are remarkably good at communicating your needs with your current handful of sounds. "Meh" means variously milk, water, food, or more of what ever you were just doing and enjoying. "Ba" means outside or going into another room. And then you have Mama, Papa/Dada, Lily, and an random array of animal noises, including "Aaah Aaah" for birds. You have also said Grandpa and Grandma before, but only rarely.

We won't discuss sleep, except to say that I hope you become a little better at it soon.

I love you so much Charlie. Thank you for bringing so much sunshine into our lives.

love
mama
xox

Saying goodbye

2011-10-06T13:05:00.003+11:00

I came back to Canberra this week because my grandfather is dying.

I guess you could say that he has been dying since they discovered the cancer and he decided against treatment - preferring to stay home rather than enduring the indignity and discomfort of anymore time in hospitals. But until this week it hasn't felt that way.

He's been sick, but he's also been writing two books (two more books to add to his sizeable collection). He's been sick, but we've had robust discussions about education, politics, sustainability and child development. He's attended family celebrations and been able to watch my kids grow. He's been keeping up with the football, attending church, and going to the farmers markets, the Art gallery and cafes.

But now he's in bed. He's still sharp as ever. He can still see my kids and tell us why he started following Essenden all those years ago (his eldest was delivered by a Nurse Coleman whose brother played for them). But he's tired and he's sleeping more and more.

For some reason I thought that by this point I would be ready to say goodbye. But I'm not.

Letter to Charlie - 10 months

2011-08-03T09:12:00.005+10:00

Dear Charlie

Yesterday you turned 10 months old.

You are changing from a baby into a little boy before our eyes at the moment and it is quite amazing to watch. You're not walking yet, but you are extremely proficient at cruising around the walls and furniture, crawling and climbing up on to everything. I will be very pleased when you decide to get down backwards though, as charging forward is still your preferred approach.

In the last two months you have learned a few new words - like Lily, Grandpa, quack, nigh nigh, bye bye, bath, more and no - and you have figured out how to clap. You are particularly (and justifiably) impressed with your capacity to clap and have a tendency to crawl into the centre of a a crowded room, sit up, look around and clap (clearly waiting for applause). It kills me with cuteness.

You have also taken to food in a big way over the last two months and mostly eat what we are eating now. In fact, you get rather offended if we offer you something different and will even spit it back in our faces if you are sufficiently annoyed. You are also an excellent drinker and just love your water, which can only be a good thing.

Sadly, for me, you are not such a great sleeper. At least not during the night. Your nose is always a bit snuffly and this tends to wake you up. Rather than getting upset about having trouble breathing or feeding you seem to decide that since you're awake you may as well have a bit of a play... and, to be honest, I really quite disagree with your timing. Another issue is that you seem to want a bit more of your own sleeping space than your sister ever did. She was only settled when tightly wrapped up in someone's arms, while you seem to like spreading yourself out - often diagonally across the upper-middle part of the bed. This makes sharing a bed with you quite interesting at times...

I am, however, happy to report that after a short bout of grumpiness while you were cutting two new teeth, you have returned to your extremely sunny disposition. You spend most of the day smiling and love to have a good laugh. In fact, you are becoming quite the little clown in your attempts to make us laugh with you. You play peek-a-boo by putting blankets over your head or popping up from behind doors or furniture, and you will repeat almost any action that gets a laugh out of Lily.

We just got back from a holiday in Queensland and you had a great time. You loved the spa at the hotel we stayed in. One afternoon we went down to the pool and I had decided not to pack your swimmers and to take you out on the grass for a play instead. Well, we got to the gate and you started kicking your legs and shouting "bath, bath, bath!" and I realised that I'd have to rush back upstairs as you can be quite a stubborn little person at times.

You also loved the beach, it was like a giant sandpit for you to play in. Unfortunately you also enjoyed diving face first into the sand with your mouth open ready to scoop up as much sand as you could manage... The resulting gritty taste was apparently not much of a deterrent either.

Next month we are going to be moving to Melbourne, which will be quite an adventure. It is strange to think that you won't really remember your time growing up in Canberra. I think you'll enjoy Melbourne though. Hopefully we'll figure out how to go car-free and we can walk, cycle and catch trams everywhere. I think you'll like that.

love
mama
xox

Fairy house

2011-07-14T18:16:00.003+10:00

We've had a lot of freezing cold, cloudy days this winter and have spent far too much time indoors as a result. But today was glorious. The sky was blue, the sun was shining and it actually felt kind of warm (for winter).

So we spent some time in our garden, playing on the swings, digging in the dirt and building a fairy house.

I have been meaning to build a fairy house with Lil for ages, but I always think that I need more time and stuff. Of course that's ridiculous. She got right into it with the aid of leaves, sticks, flowers, shells and berries - all of which were not only right in the garden, but right in the very spot where she chose to build the little house.

I have to admit that I'm not the best at playing (I get sooo bored of 'mums and dads'), but I really enjoyed this too.

Charlie: 8 months

2011-06-11T09:16:00.011+10:00

Dear Charlie

You are now 8 months old. What a difference two months makes in the life of a bubba! At six months you were my mellow little zen master. Now you are a determined, adventurous, impatient little bundle of energy. What happened?

Well, to start with, you mastered the art of crawling at 6 and a half months. A week later you figured out how to pull yourself up to standing. Then a few days later you worked out how to cruise along the furniture. Since then you seem to have decided that since you can move, you must, all the time.

Nappy changes have become a bit of an ordeal as you object, fervently, to remaining remotely still. The car and the stroller are no longer your friend. No, you must move, explore and discover, even in the middle of the night. Oh Charlie, it's been a bit of a full on two months.

It's also been pretty incredible to watch you develop so quickly from a baby to a mobile little person. Your determination is inspiring and I love watching you explore the world with such intense curiosity. Currently you are obsessed figuring out the mechanics of your food. You examine the teat of your water bottle with incredible focus and perform all sorts of experiments in order to understand how the water comes through. You do the same with any food that you are given too, which can get rather messy at times. Unfortunately you are also determined to perform the same thorough examination of my nipples and I haven't been very supportive of this endeavour. Some things are just going to have to remain a mystery little one.

Another obsession of yours in our stairs. We have a rather steep, wooden staircase in our house that you have just worked out how to climb. It is terrifying to watch you do it, but I don't have the heart to stop you once you have succeeded in getting to it. Fortunately it comes off the entryway and there is no reason for it to be open all the time. Of course, if anyone leaves that door open for the merest second then you are off and racing. When this does occur your sense of pride and achievement at reaching the top is almost worth the stress.

Winter came early to Canberra this year and brought a world of germs to our household. For the last month you have been a snuffly little thing. We have all been sick, actually, which has made us a rather tired, grumpy household. Fortunately when your good moods have been with us they have been as radiant as ever and have provided a glimmer of sunshine for all of us in what has been a bit of an ordinary month.

A daily guarantee of Charlie-happiness has been bath time. You continue to love the bath and hearing the water running has the power to drive away any Charlie-sadness. Once in the bathroom you will try to throw your body into the bath, while kicking your legs in excitement at the prospect of the joy to come. Now that you can sit up by yourself you are a little less focused on flooding the bathroom and will now play with toys instead. Of course, now that you can crawl and stand you try to do this in the bath too, and that hasn't always turned out so well.

The other morning I went into Lily's room to give her a good morning snuggle and she turned to me and said: "Isn't Charlie amazing, Mama? We are so lucky to have him."

She's quite right little one, you are amazing and we really do feel so lucky to have you here.

I can't wait to see what you do over the next couple of months. I fear that walking is not far away...

with all my love,
mama
xox

Charlie: 6 months

2011-04-10T10:46:00.003+10:00

Dear Charlie

Last week you turned 6 months old. As if on cue you also cut your first tooth, sat up by yourself for the first time and are within moments of crawling. This growing up thing happens so fast, doesn't it? Too fast really. You won't be a baby for much longer.

You continue to be a little ray of sunshine in our lives Charlie. Your smile lights up the room and your placid nature never ceases to amaze me. I have to be careful not to underestimate your determination, because once you set your mind on something, you never ever give up.

Watching you figure out how to crawl at the moment has been incredible. You spend ages essentially doing push ups on the rug, pausing briefly to execute a perfect 'plank' position and occasionally flipping yourself up into a sitting position for a bit of a break. The other day Lily looked over at you and exclaimed "Look, he's doing 'dogward down'," and indeed you were (well, downward dog, I suppose). It's rather impressive really.

I have been working on my own upper body strength too. You weigh about 9 kilos now and I'm certainly getting a good work out carrying you around every day. Fortunately I seem to have adjusted to this now and you don't seem nearly as heavy as you did a few months ago. The human body is truly amazing.

I wish that I was finding the time to write you a more detailed monthly letter the way that I did for your sister, but life is simply more hectic with two of you. A lot more, actually, and so I'm not. But I want you to know that I am enjoying every second of your life and that you amaze me in countless ways every day.

with all my love,
mama
xox

Four

2011-03-14T19:42:00.004+11:00

Lily turned 4 on Monday and we had an Enchanted Wood party to celebrate.

There were many Silkies, but we also had a rabbit, an Angry Pixie, a Dame Washalot and a butterfly.

She requested a Fairy Toadstool cake, and I happily obliged (and it worked! Yay!).

I finally finished sewing the fabric garland that I cut out for her first birthday party.

They made paper plate masks and decorated biscuits.

Her new swing set was a big hit.

I can't believe she's already 4. Although sometimes she seems 15...

He's wearing pink socks!

2011-02-18T18:10:00.003+11:00

I went shopping the other day with Charlie and while we were waiting in a checkout line the woman in front of me struck up conversation.

"How old is your baby?" she asked, as Charlie started his charm offensive.

"4 months," I said.

"Is it a boy or a girl?" she asked. (Wouldn't it be nice if there was another pronoun? 'It' just sounds so odd.)

"He's a boy. Charlie," I replied, hoping that by giving him a name we could move on to talking about him as an individual, rather than as a gender class.

"It's hard to tell," she said, pausing for a moment. "Do you have a girl as well?" she asked in a knowing tone.

"Yes," I replied.

"'Cause he's wearing pink socks," she said.

I felt like saying, "He was wearing a pink jumpsuit earlier today and his penis didn't even fall off!" But instead I just smiled nervously, hoping that our conversation was now over.

Remedial feminism needed

2011-01-28T19:05:00.004+11:00

My mum dropped over the other evening and Lily asked her where her partner was.

"She's still at work," replied Mum.

"Why," asked Lily.

"She's not on holidays like you," replied Mum. "Today was a work day for us."

"Ladies don't work," said Lily.

"What!?" I said. "Of course they do."

"Mama doesn't," said Lil to Mum.

"Yes she does," replied Mum. "She works at home looking after Charlie and you, and she works on her PhD. Some people work at home looking after small children and other people work outside the home."

"You know T? Well, her papa looks after her at home and her mama works in an office."

"And who looks after M and E?" I asked.

"Matt," replied Lil.

"And what does Claire do?"

"She works with papa," replied Lil.

...

And so it went, but oh my goodness! I can't believe she said those words!

First of all, why "ladies"? I always call women, women. Where does she get "ladies" from? It's such a horrible restrictive word.

Secondly, bloody invisible PhD, you're always causing trouble.

Thirdly, argh. I'm totally going to have to get a job (once Charlie's bigger).

[And I still don't want to talk about the Pink Disney Princess Lunchbox.]

School's back

2011-01-27T08:44:00.003+11:00

(Watermelon, banana, corn thins & tahini, choc-chip cookies, tempeh, salad)

Lily goes back to school (well 'holiday program') today and I have to admit to being just a little bit relieved. I am the kind of person who prefers one-to-one interaction and it turns out that goes double for children - especially when one of them is as much of a highly-strung extrovert as Lil. I have found the summer holidays a bit full-on.

And, yes, that is a Pink Disney Princess Lunchbox. I don't want to talk about it.

My baby girl is getting so very big these days. Here she is this morning helping with the dishes. She is quite determined to do absolutely everything for herself these days.

3 and a half months

2011-01-24T16:03:00.005+11:00

Dear Charlie

You’re just over three and a half months old now. I had intended to write you a letter at two months and again at three, but time simply got away from me so I thought I’d write one now while I have the chance.

We’ve been busy lately. First we moved house, then it was Christmas, then we spent a week at the South Coast with your grandmas, and then after a week at home we drove up to Sydney to spend a week with a couple of your other grandparents. All this change must have been pretty unsettling, but, remarkably, you have taken it all in your stride.

You have remained an incredibly serene, happy little person. I have started calling you my ray of sunshine, because your enormous smile lights up the room. We get to see a lot of it too. You seem to smile most of the day and if you’re not already smiling, then it is pretty easy to get one out of you.

Some of things that will make you smile are: blowing raspberries on your tummy; watching your sister dance; Papa coming home from work; seeing my face when you wake up; singing (especially The Wheels on the Bus and Fly Me to the Moon); and kissing your hands and feet.
Your smile is at its proudest when you are standing and, at the moment, that it fairly often. You are very strong for such a little person and can already stand up by yourself when holding on to a chair or our hands. It is very cute to watch.
While your smile is pretty fabulous, my favourite thing to do at the moment is to make you laugh. Baby laughter is truly one of the most beautiful sounds in the world. Luckily it is pretty easy to get a giggle out of you, little one. All I have to do is bounce you up and down on my lap and sing, or swing you up and down in the air.

Sometimes swinging you around can feel like a bit of a workout, as you have grown so much over the last few months. You were 3.59kgs at birth. You gained a whole kilo within 10 days and weighed 6kgs by your six-week check up. That put you in the 97th percentile! Now, at three and a half months you weigh 8kgs. I love your gorgeous chubby tummy, but you certainly do get heavy to carry around.

I feel so blessed to have you in our lives munchkin. You are a joy to have around and we all love you so much. You seem to love us right back too. You beam with happiness whenever you see us, and have even figured out how to kiss. The other day you grabbed my face in your chubby little hands and planted a big wet kiss right on my lips. I felt like my heart was going to explode.

I’m looking forward to another month full of smiles, laughter and kisses.

love mama
xo

Mouths of the babes

2010-12-06T19:35:00.003+11:00

As we were driving to the shops this morning Lily piped up from the back seat to say, "You're kind of a kid, aren't you Mum?"

"Yes," I replied. "What makes you say that?"

"Well you're little."

"That's true."

"Why?"

"I just am," I said.

"Are you going to grow into a bigger adult one day?" she asked.

"No darling."

"Why not?"

"I'm finished growing."

"One day I'll be able to pick you up."

"Probably"

A long night

2010-11-05T10:35:00.003+11:00

On Monday night we had to take poor little Charlie to hospital. He had caught a cold from Lil about two weeks earlier and after initially getting better he had started to get worse again over the weekend. He was having trouble feeding and couldn't sleep properly on his back because it made it too hard to breathe through his snuffly nose.

We took him to the doctor on Monday afternoon and he told us that he was in 'respiratory distress' and might have bronchiolitis. He showed us that all his chest muscles were straining to breathe properly and that his skin was getting mottled due to a lack of oxygen. Needless to say we took him straight to Emergency. (Well, my Dad dropped me off while P stayed home with Lil. After I'd been there a while I called my Mum who came in to help me out.)

They took us straight through and started to treat him immediately. They hooked up a monitor to him to check his oxygen levels and his heart rate and they did a chest X-ray to see if it was badly infected. Turns out he was oxygenating his blood quite well, but he was really struggling hard to do it. His heart and breathing rate were way too high and this was really stressing his little body.

It took a while, but after a while they hooked him up to oxygen (you can see the nasal prongs in his little face in the photo above) and he started to get better almost instantly. It was so nice to see. Not long after he fell into a calm sleep.

We were finally admitted up to the paediatrics ward after midnight. Mum was able to go home and I got to lie down on a creaky pull out bed next to Charlie's cot (between feeds and resettling him after they aspirated him a few times). They gradually dialed back the oxygen and by 4:00am he was off the oxygen support and breathing pretty well. At 5:30am a paediatrician came by and told me that they were still waiting on the test results from his mucous sample, but that they expected to discharge him later that day.

In the morning my Dad came in to help me out (and to bring in some more nappies for Charlie). I went downstairs to drink a coffee (no hot drinks are allowed in the ward) and to stare at the wall for a bit. While I was there our real estate agent called to tell me that our landlord was willing to extend our lease (otherwise we would have had to move next week), so that was nice.

Around 9:30am Lily decided that she wanted to see us and so she and P got the bus in to the hospital. She seems fascinated by all things medical at the moment and enjoyed being there when the main paediatricians did their rounds and checked on Charlie. They declared him well enough to go home and told us that his chest was all clear (it had been really noisy the night before simply because it was so hard for him to breathe, but there was no infection there at all) it was all upper respiratory. So then we just had to wait for the paperwork to get done. (We finally got home at 4pm)

I have to say that the hospital staff were all fantastic. The nurses (and we saw about 10 of them) were all simply lovely and so were the doctors and other medical staff. The whole thing also drove home to us how good it is to have supportive family nearby. It would have been so hard without the help of my parents (and P's parents would also have been there in a flash if we'd asked).

Charlie also lived up to his Little Buddha nickname. He was astonishingly calm throughout the whole experience and spent much of the time fast asleep (and much of that all by himself in a cot - a place I never expected to see any of my children sleeping!). Munchkin!

One month

2010-11-02T08:00:00.000+11:00

Dear Charlie

Today you are exactly one month old.

I know it's cliche, but in many ways it really does feel as if you've always been here. In other ways, of course, we are all still adjusting. I am adjusting to the lack of sleep that goes hand in hand with the arrival of a newborn and their tiny tummy. Papa is adjusting to the avalanche of laundry and the seemingly never-ending array of parenting & household demands that comes with having two young children. Your sister is adjusting to the changes in her routine and, particularly, in my availability.

That said, all of us are so very happy to make these adjustments in order to welcome you into our family. Lily seems to melt whenever she looks at you and will spent ages stroking your head and thinking of new ways to entertain you. She can't wait until you're big enough to play with her, but seems content for the moment just to gaze at your cuteness and laugh at all the new noises you make.

I'm almost reluctant to say this, in case I jinx things, but it should be acknowledged that you are an incredibly calm little person. We have taken to calling you Little Buddha, because your default mode seems to be so relaxed and content. It's rather a change from your sister who has been a whirlwind almost from day one.

So welcome to the world Little Buddha. I am so excited to get to know you better and to watch you grow!

with all my love,
mama
xo

Introducing Charlie

2010-10-07T14:38:00.006+11:00

Charlie arrived into the world on Saturday 2 October at 11:45am. He was born in the bath into the waiting arms of his mama after what I'd have to describe as a pretty good labour.

Warning: Long Post
(Feel free to just look at the photos)

Prelabour contractions had started the weekend before, but were not strong enough to demand my attention until Thursday night. I went to bed hoping for action during the night, but woke up a little disappointed. After breakfast we all went for a walk to the park and I walked around on uneven surfaces to try to get things moving, but by 9am it was clear that Charlie was planning to take his time and so I told P to go to work.

After P had gone, my Dad came over to look after Lily and they went out to the city to do some shopping. I busied myself in the kitchen baking focaccia and mixing a birthday cake for Charlie (the carrot, coconut & macadamia nut cake from Vegan with a Vengeance), stopping every now and then to manage the contradictions which were starting to get stronger.

Dad and Lily returned from town and we all had lunch together of fresh focaccia and salad. I put the cake in the oven, hoping...

After lunch I sat out in the sunshine that afternoon watching Lil play with Dad. Around 3pm we sat down to have cake for afternoon tea and my contradictions became intense enough to require most of my attention, but were still around 10 minutes apart.

Dad and Lil sat down to watch some Playschool in the late afternoon and I had a nap. I also called P to ask him to bring home some spicy Indian food for dinner (from Blu Ginger).

Dad headed off around 4:30pm and I gave Lily some early dinner. She was unfazed when I had to turn my attention to my contractions, which helped to make then seem less important.

At around 5:30pm P came home with dinner. I added lime pickle to the curries and every time I had a really spicy mouthful my contractions would intensify. This seemed like a good thing.

P got Lily ready for bed and (most unusually) I did the dishes in order to have something to focus on.

I snuggled Lily to sleep (like I do every night) and breathed through the contractions in bed and then sat on the couch with P while he rubbed my back. By 8pm I was having to stand and lean on the arm of the couch to deal with my contractions, which had become pretty strong (but were still only 10 minutes apart). P started to get up with me and rub my lower back through each contraction, which really helped. Then he thought of pressing on my hips, which was even better as it was starting to feel like my pelvic bone was being forced open (which, of course, it was).

By 9:00pm I decided to text my doula, Vickie, and my Mum to give them some warning and to allow them to get an early night (just in case). The contractions continued to come only 10 minutes apart though and so at 9:30pm I thought that I had better try to get some sleep.

I took two panadeine forte and lay down in bed while P continued to rub my back. When the contractions came I rolled over on to a pillow, circling my hips and breathing through the pain. Within half an hour I could feel the codeine in my system. I started to feel slightly nauseous and heavy and worried for a moment that I had only made things worse, but then I drifted off to sleep. P went to sleep in Lily's bed (as he has for the last few months).

I woke up around 2:30am. The pain killers were starting to wear off and I had to concentrate again to get through each contraction. They were still 10 minutes apart and I decided to stay in bed and to try to sleep between each wave. This worked until around 3:30am when I was working too hard to sleep at all, but talked myself into staying in bed to get a bit more rest.

I managed to stay in bed until 5am when the contractions were just too strong to handle lying down. I got up and made myself a bowl of cereal. While I was eating it I wrote a shopping list for the farmers markets. For some strange reason I thought that P might still have the chance to go and buy our fruit and veg for the week...

It was still and peaceful in the early morning light and I felt quite calm despite the growing intensity of each contraction. I worked through a few of them by leaning over the kitchen table, but decided to move into the loungeroom in order to use the Swiss Ball instead and rest my legs a little. I knelt in front of the ball and used it to help me rotate my hips through each contraction. In between each wave I rested my head on it and tried to sleep a little in order to preserve my energy. I was surprised to find myself drifted off every now and then.

At 6am I sent my Mum a text message to ask her and her partner, A, to come over to look after Lily so that I could monopolise P's attention. By 7am, when P woke up, I hadn't heard back from Mum and so I asked P to call her. She had just looked at her phone and was getting ready to come over.

Lily got up around then and we all sat down in the kitchen for breakfast. I left the room for my next contraction, but had to lean on the kitchen table again for the following one. Lil wanted to know why I was leaning on the table and, after the contraction had peaked, I explained that my back hurt and that leaning on the table helped me to feel better. She decided that her back was sore too and to join me. Laughing at her made everything feel a lot less intense.

Mum and A came over while we were finishing breakfast. I had a contraction just as A walked in the door and wasn't able to greet her, which felt odd, but she just walked passed quietly and went to entertain Lily in her bedroom.

I stayed in the kitchen with P who was now free to rub my back and hips through each contraction, which helped so much. I was starting to find it hard not to vocalise loudly and was a little disappointed when Lil decided not to go to the Farmers Markets with Mum and A.

We gave A our market shopping list and Mum stayed behind to look after Lil. I moved back into the lounge room in order to lean over the Swiss Ball again. At one point Lil came in and wanted to know why I was leaning on the Swiss Ball. I explained that it helped my back and she informed me that her back was still quite sore and that she'd like to use it. Once again laughing at her calmed me right down, but I was glad that she didn't keep the ball for very long.

By 8:30am my contractions were getting really strong and Mum started talking to Lily about going over to her place for a play. I also asked P to call Vickie to ask her to come over, but then got all indecisive while he was on the phone and ended up saying we'd call her back. (I'm not sure why, in retrospect. I have a horrible feeling that I was trying not to be a burden!) But it wasn't long before I asked P to call her back to ask her to come over.

A returned with the market shopping just before 9am and Mum and Lil were able to head off. As soon as they were out of the house I started to vocalise loudly through each contraction and found that it helped so much. I was amused to realise that I sounded just like an elephant at one point after years of failing to make a good elephant noise for Lil.

Vickie arrived around 9:20am while I was having a contraction. They were coming on very strongly now and she remarked that labour seemed to be pretty established. Within a few contractions I started to sob as I became overwhelmed by the pain. (I know now that I was transitioning, but had no idea at the time). At that point Vickie suggested that we think about heading into the birth centre pretty quickly. Looking back at my (long, painful posterior) labour with Lil I realised that I'd gone in too soon last time and I was determined not to make that mistake again and told Vickie my concerns. She reassured me that it wasn't too soon this time around and so I agreed to head in.

Vickie called Gill, my midwife, who said that she would go into the birth centre and start running the bath. P started to get the car ready, while Vickie stayed with me and massaged my back through each contraction, while encouraging me to vocalise and breathe deeply.

Last time the car ride had been horrific, as I anxiously watched each turn from the front seat and waited fearfully for each contraction to hit me. This time I knelt backwards on the back seat with my head resting on a pillow. I also kept my eyes closed and was able to move and breathe through each contraction. It was a much better trip as a result.

We arrived at the birth centre at 10:30am. I sat down on the couch and Vickie dimmed the lights and started to burn some essential oils. I was amazed by how good the scent of the oils made me feel. When the next contraction hit I knelt on a mat on the floor and leaned over a bean bag. Gill suggested that I move into the bath.

Again I was determined not to get into the bath 'too soon' as I had done during my labour with Lily and expressed my concerns, but Gill reassured me that this was a good time to get in. P put on his board shorts and sat on the edge of the bath while I knelt on a foam pad, leaning forward over his knees. This enabled me to move through each contraction and to lie forward and rest in between. Vickie turned off the lights and put on a couple of tea lights instead. She also put on some calm music and brought in the oil burner. It was incredible what a different this made to the atmosphere in the room and to my capacity to deal with the pain.

Not long after getting in the water my contractions seemed to slow down a little and I was a bit concerned until Vickie mentioned to P that things had slowed down because Charlie's head was molding. I had been thinking that I might be going into second stage, but didn't want to get my hopes up and decided to keep thinking that I should pace myself to keep going until dinner time. Gill and Vickie left us alone in the bathroom and I started to feel all emotional, telling P how much I loved him over and over.

Not long after I started to feel strong pressure during my contractions and could feel myself starting to push. Vickie came in and suggested that I focus my energy down through my vocalisations. As I controlled my screams into grunts I could feel my pushes start to become more effective. I didn't experience this part of labour with Lily (as I'd had an epidural by this point) and as the intense pressure built up in my pelvis I decided that this was probably a good thing. I have heard that some women prefer the second stage of labour, but I found it unbelievably painful.

I could feel Charlie moving through the birth canal and it wasn't all that long before his head was pushing out. Gill was using a mirror and torch to see what was happening and I felt like saying "his head's about to come out," but I continued to be paranoid about getting my hopes up and so I kept quiet (well, about that, I was doing plenty of grunting and screaming during contractions).

Soon I could feel Charlie's head pushing through. It stung like mad and felt totally wrong, but I also started to feel excited that we were about to meet our baby boy. After his head had come out there was a brief pause and then I pushed the rest of him out with the next contraction. Gill told me to reach down and pick him up and so I did, amazed that I could 'catch' my own baby. As I pulled him out of the water I noticed that his cord was wrapped around his neck and told Gill who gently took it off. I held our gorgeous little boy to my chest and he began to scream. At least we knew that he was breathing!

It was 11:45am, only 75 minutes after we'd arrived at the birth centre.

We asked Vickie to call Mum so that she could bring Lily in to meet her little brother. Apparently she had to be told that Charlie had actually been born before she could be convinced to leave the fun at Grandma's house. She hadn't been there very long.

Gill pulled a mat into the bathroom and piled some pillows up against the bath and then P helped me up with Charlie still in my arms so that I could birth the placenta on the mat. I'd decided not to have the injection of Syntocinon and was glad that it only took 15 minutes, and a couple more contractions, for this to be over.

From there I took Charlie to the bed and soon after he was having his first breastfeed. Lily arrived shortly after and came in to meet her little brother. It was love at first sight.

Limbo land

2010-09-10T09:34:00.003+10:00

These past few weeks have been intense ones for political tragics like myself. I have been obsessed with the statistics and details of our newly formed hung parliament and the negotiations (and ultimate) decisions of the Independents as to who to support to form a new government. Part of my obsession was grounded in my genuine fear of living under the reality of an Abbott government - albeit a rather hamstrung one, considering the make-up of both the House of Reps and the Senate (with the Greens set to hold the balance of power come July 2011). However, my obsession was also fueled by the fact that I found the whole process inherently fascinating.

Now, of course, we have a new government (and thank goodness it is a Gillard-led minority government - I have a hopeful feeling that I am going to like her far more in governing-mode than I did in campaigning-mode) and it is time to move on with life. But given that I am now over 38 weeks pregnant this is no simple matter. Life in these last weeks of pregnancy kind of resembles life under a shifting minority government - you really have no idea from one day to the next what will happen. Even worse, unlike the situation we just went through as a nation, no one else is really interested in endlessly speculating about what might happen when and there is even less concrete information available on which to base such speculations.

And so I am just trying to patiently exist in limbo land, knowing each day may be my last day of pregnancy; my last day without a newborn baby to attend to. I'm not very good at being pregnant (to put it mildly) and so I am partly yearning for each day to be the last. I would love to rid myself of this cumbersome pregnant body and I am so so very keen to meet and snuggle Charlie. But, well, I still have a few things to do before the birth and I am not crazy enough (this time around) to think that I'll have the slightest capacity to attend to them once Mr Charlie has made his appearance. So, I guess I'd better get back to writing this bloody book chapter and to finalising my pile of Christmas presents (yes, that is really on my List).

I hope that you are all keeping well and that you're enjoying our "New Paradigm." It looks like we'll all have to avoid even glancing at The Australian for the duration lest we want to lose our collective sanity to the Great Unhinging.

Makin' toys for my babes

2010-09-01T13:07:00.008+10:00

While Lily was unwell she took to flicking through my 'Softies' sewing book and asking me to make her some of the toys that she found in it. I was happy to do it too, because the process of choosing the toy and the fabrics and the process of helping me to trace the patterns and stuff the toys transformed her briefly from a listless little thing into an excited and happy girl.

The first toy that she chose was "Mabel Monkey" and I took the opportunity to make a second one for Charlie. I was really happy with the way they turned out too. It's a really simple and straightforward pattern.

As soon as "Mabel" was finished, Lily gave her a big cuddle, threw a birthday party for her and then picked up the book again to choose another toy. When I thought about it, I could understand why. When I was a child, if I could have made pictures in a book come to life within a day or two, I would have been all about it too.

I was also pretty happy with her next choice. I have always liked the look of "Polly" and I thought that Lily's choice of fabrics was lots of fun. Again, it was a pretty simple pattern to make and I loved how Polly turned out.

Finally, I have been intending to make Lily a Steiner doll to give her after the birth as a sort of "Big Sister" present. I got my lovely sister-in-law to help me get started quite some time ago and then it sat in my study/studio for a long time... Well, I finally bought the book "Making Waldorf Dolls" a few weeks ago and it gave me to courage to finish the doll.

I have to say that, unlike the softies, this was not an easy project. I found it pretty challenging actually and won't be jumping to make another one for quite a while. My sister-in-law makes these dolls for her business and only charges $145 for each doll (which comes with two complete outfits, including gorgeous hand-knitted cardigans!). Once you consider the considerable cost of the materials that go into making them, plus the time that it takes to put them together, I would have to charge upwards of $500 to even make a profit. I am in awe of her!

That said, in the end I was really happy with how Lil's doll turned out (especially if you look back at my first attempt at making a Steiner doll!) and I am kind of excited to give it to her after Charlie is born.

What do you think of them?

Snow and sunshine

2010-08-30T10:02:00.005+10:00

This weekend was glorious. We went out to the Farmers Markets early and then Lil decided to go from there to my Mum and her partner's place for a play. This meant that P could take me to prenatal yoga, which turned out to be lucky because it was a "partners" class and so he was able to stay and join in. (I am not sure that he quite saw this as 'lucky', but that's another issue...)

Image from here.

On the way home from yoga we stopped past the train station to pick up my Dad who came down to help us out and hang out with Lil for the weekend. Then we went to Silo bakery to pick up yumminess for lunch and the week to come. After picking up Lil from my Mum's, we headed home to eat a scrumptious lunch of fresh sourdough sandwiches and tarts in the sunshine. It turned into one of those gorgeous late winter days in Canberra, where the air is still a bit crisp, but the sky in bright blue and the sun is strong and warm.

After lunch Lil forced Dad to push her on the swing, while P and I got stuck into our sadly neglected garden. I pruned the overgrown plants and did a bit of weeding, while P dug out a new veggie patch around the side. Inspired, Lil decided to join in by planting a bunch of tomatoes seeds and dragging some sticks and weeds over to the compost heap. By 4pm I was utterly shattered and took myself off to bed for a nap. Every muscle in my body felt used, but in a good kind of way.

On Sunday Dad and P were planning to take Lil out to Corin Forest to play in the snow. We were being somewhat hopeful about the snow. It had clearly come down in the Brindabellas on Thursday, but we weren't able to find any information if it was actually still around or even if it had fallen as low as Corin Forest... But we thought it was worth a try.

I spent the morning baking cookies (these ones, and I can highly recommend them - with a little less sugar than she recommends) and packing an elaborate picnic for the snow adventurers. (My intention was to potter around the house once they had gone.) However, when they were on their way out the door, P said 'Why don't you come?' and suddenly I really wanted to (partly 'cause the picnic looked so yummy, and partly because of the prospect of seeing Lil's first contact with snow) and so I threw on some clothes and jumped in the car with them.

Our prospects of finding snow were looking grim for the first 45 minutes of the 50 minute drive. We hadn't seen any at all and were preparing Lil for 'just a picnic in the forest and a play' when suddenly we started to see some patches by the side of the road. Relieved we rounded the corner to see the whole hillside at Corin Forest was covered with snow.

After a dressing Lily up into some borrowed snow gear, which was really very munchkiny, we squelched up the sodden hillside into the bush and Lil had her first contact with snow. Don't you just love "firsts"? She squealed with delight when it was thrown up in the air and proceeded to crawl and slide all over the hillside in her excitement. It was gorgeous to watch.

After making the obligatory snowperson, we stomped back down the hill to have a picnic lunch in the sunshine. It was another gorgeous day - topped off by another nap by yours truly in the afternoon.

Challenges of feminist mothering

2010-08-18T11:06:00.005+10:00

[Image credit: http://www.amazon.com/Barbie-Unbound-Parody-Obsession/dp/0934678898
BTW: Have you seen this book? It's really quite funny.]

The other day Lily informed me that girls like pink and boys like purple. I challenged her on that and she wavered a little, particularly when P announced loudly how much he LOVES pink. However, within minutes she was telling P that girls couldn't skateboard it was only for boys.

%*#%^#?!??!

We asked her who told her that and she mentioned a little girl that she goes to preschool with. I hate the power of patriarchy to infiltrate everything.

Of course we spend the rest of the afternoon telling her that she could learn to skateboard when she gets a bit bigger and I demonstrated that her female dolls house people could do some "mad tricks" on a miniature skateboard. She was very keen on them jumping over benches.

Nicole from another mother has been doing a great series of posts on being a "bad mother" (you know: "human") and her latest one on being a "failed feminist" reminded me of wanting to post about this.

I have to keep reminding myself that my mother managed to instill feminist values in me despite the very patriarchal culture that I grew up in. However, as she keeps pointing out, things have actually gotten worse since then in relation to young girls. The gender divide in clothing, toys & accessories is far starker than it was in the 70s & 80s and the whole sexualisation of girls has added a whole new layer of challenge. I think I am going to have to do some more work on finding a supportive community of other feminist parents to spend more time with...

Sick

2010-08-18T10:33:00.004+10:00

Did you watch The Young Ones when you were a kid? I bloody loved that show, wrong though it was. Anyway, I've been thinking about it lately - particularly that episode "Sick" where they all get really sick (Neil in particular) and everything becomes even more gross and chaotic than usual.

[image credit: http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/theyoungones/index.shtml]

You see our little household has been sort of living that episode. We have all been taking turns being ridiculously sick for the past couple of months (with poor Lil having far more than her fair share of horrible sickness) and it is really getting to be quite overwhelming. The fact that it is freezing outside and so we can't really air out the house, or even hang the washing outside, hasn't helped. Neither has the fact that I am now a million years pregnant.

Poor Paul has been taking his latest turn being sick and there is now a frightening tower of dishes in our kitchen. Normally I do the odd load during the day, but he makes sure they are done every night and he just hasn't been up to that since the weekend. I have tried to step up, but whenever I stand at the sink for more than a few minutes my lower back starts seizing up and I find that I can't stand or walk for the next hour or two, which is not so feasible when you have a 3-year-old & a sick husband to care for...

Of course, my PhD has been the first thing to suffer from all this sickness, but Paul's job hasn't fared too well lately either and he is seriously thinking of dropping out of his Masters degree, which would be a shame... Hopefully we can get on top of this plague of illness in the next couple of weeks before Mr Charlie arrives. Otherwise things are going to get very interesting indeed!

Marriage equality

2010-08-14T19:57:00.004+10:00

On the day that I married P I smiled all day. I smiled so much that my mouth began to ache, but I just couldn't stop. Honestly I felt that happy.

I didn't grow up thinking that getting married was necessarily something that I would do. I never had dreams of a fairy tale wedding or living 'happily ever after'. Not only did my parents get divorced when I was 5, but with the help of my feminist mother I understood from a very young age that the institution of marriage was founded on some fairly problematic patriarchal traditions whereby property in a woman was transferred from her father to her husband. It also had a sad history of trapping people in unhappy or abusive relationships and of reinforcing unequal power relationships in our society.

Despite all this I still chose to get married.

Why?

First and foremost I guess I truly believe that not only is culture something that is constantly evolving, but that it is necessary to make a conscious effort to claim cultural traditions for progressive purposes in order not to cede them entirely to conservative forces.

Second, and this relates to the first point, I believe that cultural traditions have an incredible symbolic power to convey so much more meaning into our lives that we are often willing to acknowledge in the West (or Global North). I don't want to abandon these cultural practices too easily and I felt the tradition of marriage was one that I wanted to take part in, despite its problematic history.

The reason that I wanted to take part in the tradition of marriage specifically was that I felt that it had the power to communicate a whole range of messages that we really significant for me. Due to its history in our culture, marriage had the power to communicate clearly to our family and friends that P and I were now a family and that we hoped that they would adopt our respective partners into our respective family and friendship circles and that they would respect our relationship as being fundamental to our sense of family and belonging in the world. A wedding is certainly not the only way of communicating this message, but it is certainly the most powerful in our culture (particularly if you have family members who are quite religious, etc).

Marriage also had that powerful shorthand in relation to the wider community and to the State and the way that all its various organs treat our relationship. This wasn't a very significant reasons for us to get married, but for some people it would be very important.

Finally, harking back to that symbolic meaning issue, I also felt that marriage was one way that P and I could know that we were both on the same page about where our relationship was going. Of course it is totally possible to commit to someone without marrying them. Of course it is possible to have honest discussions about creating a shared vision for the future, etc. However, some things are difficult to articulate and the less cerebral shared understanding that comes from deciding to marry someone can make that whole process more straightforward for some of us...

So I got married. I didn't change my name. I didn't get 'given away' or promise to obey him. But I got married and it was one of the happiest days of my life. My whole family was there along with many of my friends. We committed our lives to each other in a rotunda by the beach and then I kissed him on the nose. That evening we gathered with our nearest and dearest to celebrate, to eat vegan yum cha and to dance. It was lovely.

My mother and her partner have been together for far longer than P and I. They have loved and supported each other for many many years. They are committed to spending the rest of their lives together. However, despite all this, they are not legally permitted to marry in Australia because they are both female. They are currently denied the right to access the powerful cultural tradition of marriage to communicate to their families and friends that they consider each other family. Of course, their family and friends do understand this by now, but they have also been denied the right to communicate this powerful message to the wider community, to the State and to each other.

Honestly, this makes me so angry. I know that some people consider this to be a minor issue, but it's not. It's a fundamental human rights issue. We might take a fairly casual approach to our cultural traditions here in Australia, but that doesn't mean that they aren't significant or that they don't carry with them enormous power. Denying one group of people access to that power is a human rights abuse.

Today we attended a marriage equality rally in Canberra. This year it was particularly important because there is a federal election next week. Both the ALP and the Coalition have taken positive measures to deny marriage equality to queer people in Australia. Both should be sent a strong message that this is a totally unacceptable breach of human rights.

Meanwhile on planet dark ages, the Families First candidate Wendy Francis has been tweeting about gay marriage being a recipe for child abuse. Having been raised by a gay parent, I found this obnoxious and massively ignorant. However, I do question how fundamentally different it is to the stance adopted by the Coalition and the ALP. Saying that our culture is 'just not ready' for gay marriage is just a more subtle way of perpetuating the exact same prejudices and discriminatory practices. It just means that the bigots in those parties have had better media training.

The ACT Legislative Assembly have tried twice to make civil unions legal for same-sex couples in the ACT. The first time they did this the Howard-Liberal government overrode the legislation. The second time the Rudd-ALP government forced an amendment that prohibited any kind of celebration. They prohibited a celebration! WTF?!

The Australian Greens have tried to introduce a Marriage Equality Act several times and have been blocked by both major parties. If they gain the balance of power in the Senate this election then they may have more leverage to get a conscious vote on this issue. If Lin Hatfield-Dodds gets up in the ACT Senate then the Greens will have the balance of power straight away. This is a significant election for many reasons and marriage equality is one of them.

"Cost of living"

2010-07-27T13:42:00.004+10:00

Bernard Keane has an interesting article in today's Crikey about the so-called "cost of living" debate/policies in this year's federal election campaign. He points out:

"Cost of living" is in this context a misnomer. The more accurate term is "cost of consumption choices". This is about Australians' expectations that their expensive lifestyle choices will be supported by governments. Actual poverty, where the cost of living has real, everyday consequences, won't feature in the campaign. There are no votes in addressing poverty. This is about telling middle-income Australians that their high-consumption lifestyles are a matter of legitimate public policy focus.

What I find so interesting is that the rhetoric behind these so-called "cost of living" policies pretends that we have an economic system that would ever actually regulate the market to such an extent. (Although when details are requested both Gillard and Abbott carefully shy away from stating this directly). It is no wonder that people get so confused about the nature of our economic system.

I remember when I was in my last year of law school I had a friend who worked on ACCC phone lines. A woman called up one day and asked why they weren't doing anything about the cost of bread. "They can just charge anything they like," she complained. "That's communism!"

On a similar note, I remember being taught in Constitutional Law that around 90% of a large surveyed group of US citizens in the 1990s thought the phrase "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs," was from the US Constitution. And they do far more political education in High School than we do.

Why I'm voting for the Greens

2010-07-20T10:19:00.005+10:00

At the upcoming Federal election on 21 August, I plan to vote 1 for the Greens. These are some of the main reasons why:

They have a humane, compassion and reasonable policy on asylum seekers.
They are the only party with a genuine commitment to doing something positive about the problem of climate change now.*
They support marriage equality.
They support a Human Rights Act for Australia.
They do not support nuclear power or nuclear weapons.**
They have real policies for sustainability - rather than using the term to mean that they intend to reduce the immigration of 'the wrong people'.
They support six-month paid parental leave with superannuation benefits.
They do not support the mandatory Internet filter.
I believe them to be a party of real principle, whereas the two major parties seem committed to 'pragmatic' poll-driven policy making. A vote for poll-driven policy making is a vote for whatever the pollsters believe that people in marginal seats are concerned about. I see no reason to vote for that.

* Please, don't run that silly line about them not being serious about climate change because they blocked the CPRS. By the time the ALP and the Coalition had amended that piece of legislation it was not something that the Greens could support in good conscience. Yes, it was related to action on climate change, but it was bad action. It paid billions of dollars to polluting industries to keep polluting and committed Australia to a program whereby we'd to pay billions more in order to increase the pathetically low target of reductions in the future, and it over-allocated permits. This was a barrier to action, not a step in the right direction.

** Again, please don't argue that this makes them bad for climate change action. Yes, nuclear power would reduce our greenhouse emissions, but it would do so at the expense of creating radioactive waste. We currently have absolutely no idea how to safely dispose of radioactive waste and it is, therefore, thoroughly irresponsible to create it.

A dangerous or wasted vote?

I know that some people are concerned that by voting for the Greens they (or I) will be effectively electing the Abbott Coalition. The idea is that it is necessary to give the ALP your first preference in order to ensure that they cross the line ahead of the Coalition. I can understand where this concern comes from. However, it is actually based on a misunderstanding of our electoral system.

Let's start with the Senate. Our federal government is not formed in the Senate. This means that gaining a majority of seats in the Senate does not assist a party to form government (nor does having a minority prevent them from forming government - the ALP, for example, currently do not have a majority of seats in the Senate). This means that voting 1 for your local Greens candidate(s) in the Senate cannot increase the Coalition's chances of forming government. Instead, it does a number of other things.

First, it increases the likelihood of your local Greens candidate gaining a Senate seat and, if they were to do that, then they would have the capacity to represent your area and truly progressive policies in Parliament.
Second, political parties receive electoral funding based on the number of first preference votes they receive. So voting 1 for your local Greens will increase the amount of electoral funding that the Greens receive, thus increasing their capacity to lobby for progressive policies and to run better political campaigns in the future at the local, state and federal levels.
Third, if your local candidate gets up and so do other Greens Senate candidates then the Greens might end up holding the balance of power in the Senate. This would give them even more power to seek progressive amendments to legislation or to block legislation that is truly problematic from a Greens perspective (like the Internet Filter).
Fourth, an electoral swing to the Greens will give the ALP a clear message that it cannot take progressive voters for granted and continue to move to the Right in order to gain more votes. It will also force them to negotiate with the Greens - something that they have basically refused to do for the last three years.
Finally, you can choose to preference your local ALP candidate second, meaning that if the local Greens candidate does not get up then your vote will go to straight to your local ALP candidate (thus preventing your vote from contributing to a Senate that is controlled by the Libs or, heaven forbid, Families First).

OK, now the House of Reps. Here it is the case that the party who receives a clear majority of seats is able to form government. So what would be the result of voting 1 for your local Greens candidate for the House of Reps.

They might get in. Currently the Greens do not have any sitting members in the House of Reps. It would be great if we could change that, because it would signal a shift in Australian politics away from the current deadlock of the two-party system and that can only mean good things for democracy and for the choices that will be available in the future.
If they didn't get up, the Greens would still receive that vital increase in electoral funding.
A swing to the Greens in the lower house would send an even stronger message to the ALP to stop taking progressive voters for granted and to start negotiating with the Greens.
In the very unlikely event that the election of a Greens house of reps candidate made the difference between ALP election and defeat to the Coalition, the ALP could decide to form a coalition with the Greens. However, let's be sensible here. At this election the ALP will either get up on its own, or it will lose to the Coalition because people have chosen to vote for the Coalition ahead of the ALP. It will have nothing to do with the Greens.
On that note, you can, of course, vote 2 for the ALP in order to ensure that they get your vote should your local Greens candidate fail to get up. This vote will be just as effective for them as a first preference vote.

Any thoughts, questions?

Jeremy Sears and John Quiggin both have great posts on this issue, and LP is asking commenters to let them know their reasons for voting Green instead of ALP.

Apparently compassion is just PC nonesense

2010-07-05T10:25:00.006+10:00

It was becoming increasingly clear that the Gillard-Labor government was preparing to "lurch to the Right" on asylum seekers (and let's not pretend that there were actually occupying a middle-ground previous, please), but it was still deeply depressing to read yesterday about Gillard announcing that Labor is preparing to 'get tough on asylum seekers.' Particularly disappointing was her statement that 'political correctness' should not shut-down an honest debate about 'border security':

"I'd like to sweep away any sense that people should close down any debate, including this debate, through a sense of self-censorship or political correctness. People should feel free to say what they feel. For people to say they're anxious about border security doesn't make them intolerant. It certainly doesn't make them a racist - it means they're expressing a genuine view."

The arrival of tiny numbers of asylum seekers by boat into our country is not a border security issue. It is a humanitarian issue.

Over 90% of these people are found to be genuine refugees (if they are allowed to get in and spend years in our detention centers, racking up debt to the government for the 'privilege' of being there). Being 'genuine refugees' means that they are fleeing truly horrifying, life-threatening situations in their countries of origin. They might be members of persecuted minorities, such as Tamils from Sri Lanka or Hazaras from Afghanistan, or they might be suffering political persecution in their homeland.

Many people, including Tony Abbott, have suggested that these people should just stop in the first country that they arrive in. However, as Julian Burnside points out, it is not that simple. Hazaras are not safe in Pakistan as they arrive in areas that are frequently controlled by the Taliban (the group responsible for their persecution in Afghanistan), while no one receives true protection in Indonesia, as that country is not a signatory to the UN Refugee Convention. If they are lucky enough to have their claims processed by UNHCR in Indonesia, it will often take over a decade, during which time they are considered 'illegal' and have no rights to education or health, and risk being sent back to their dangerous homeland at any point. (BTW: India is not signatory to the Refugee Convention either.)

To pretend that political correctness is currently preventing an 'honest debate' in this country is deeply dishonest. Currently talk-back radio is full of people expressing their view that "boat people should be sent back." There is also a bloody good reason why many of these views are not considered to be 'political correct': they are founded on a xenophobic feeling of "us" v "them" and contain more than a little racism to boot. Take this caller, for example:

Caller Melba says that boat people should be sent back to their own country. She says that the “islamification of Australia” is an open secret. — 2GB (Sydney) Breakfast Chris Smith

Instead of pandering to these views, the government has a responsibility to actually take some leadership in this debate. It would be quite easy to actually dispel a number of myths associated with asylum seekers arriving by boat; to better publicise the true facts and statistics and to promote a sense of compassion and tolerance in our community.

They could start by letting people know:

Australia takes less than 1% of the world's refugees; and
Asylum seekers arriving by boat make up a tiny percentage of our annual arrivals for immigration.

As Julian Burnside puts it:

"at the current rate of arrivals it would take about 20 years to fill the MCG with boat people. The largest number to arrive in any 12-month period over the past three decades is 4100. Compare that with about 200,000 new permanent migrants every year. Boat arrivals so far this year amount to less than three days' worth of ordinary migration."

They could also ask people to put themselves into the shoes of a typical asylum seeker and to ask themselves: "What would you do?"

Imagine for a moment that you and your family were members of a persecuted minority - say Tamils in Sri Lanka, who are currently facing genocide after the collapse of the Tamil Tigers. Imagine you somehow managed to get yourselves as far as Indonesia for 'processing as refugees', only to find that you have a precarious wait of over one decade, during which time you have no capacity to support your family, no rights to health care or education, and are at continuous risk of being deported back to Sri Lanka. Would you pay a people smuggler (or in-debt yourself to them) in order to gain the possibility of arriving somewhere safer? Would you risk just about anything to get your children to a place where they don't have to constantly fear for their lives and might have a chance of making it to adulthood? Or would you 'queue up'?

You really must watch this

2010-07-01T14:32:00.001+10:00

This animation of a recent David Harvey speech on the underlying cause of the current global economic crisis is fantastic. I wish I could insert it into my PhD thesis.

Mini blueberry bagels

2010-06-29T21:57:00.002+10:00

Flushed with success from my bagel baking on Saturday, I decided to have another go on Sunday. This time I made blueberry bagels (draining the very last of last summer's blueberries from our freezer) and I decided to make them mini.

I had to alter the recipe a bit in order to get them to work and so I thought that I would share it with you here (partly so that I don't lose it myself), because it must be said that they were utterly delicious!

Ingredients
• 3/4 teaspoon active dry yeast
• 1 & 1/3 cups warm water
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• 4.5 cups plain flour
• 1 tablespoon sea salt
• 2/3 cup of fresh or frozen blueberries
• Extra sugar for topping (optional)
• Vegetable oil (for bowl)
• Plastic wrap (or some clean plastic bags)

Preparation time: Just over four hours. (Most of this is for rising, so you can be doing other things)
Baking time: About 14 minutes.

Method
Whisk together the yeast and water for a few minutes and leave it to stand for a few minutes.

Mix yeast & water together with remaining in the bread machine on pizza dough setting (or in a mixer with a dough hook for about 20 minutes; or by hand if you are cool and old school).

Remove dough and knead on a lightly floured surfaced for about 1 minute (until a slightly tacky -- but not sticky -- dough forms). Continue to knead dough for about 5 more minutes (adding small amounts of flour if necessary to make it not sticky) -- then transfer to a lightly oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap (make it a bit big so that you can use it for another purpose later).

Let rise in a warm place for 2 hours (until doubled in bulk).

Divide dough into 20 equal pieces (each should weigh about 50 grams). Cover with a clean damp kitchen towel and leave it to rest for about 20 minutes.

Heavily grease two baking sheets with oil and set aside.

With lightly oiled hands (or floured hands if the blueberries have made the mixture a tad sticky), roll each piece of dough into a log. Then turn the log into a little ring, sticking the two ends together with a little bit of water and some rolling.

Place the bagels on a lightly floured chopping board (about 1 inch apart) and cover with that piece of oiled plastic wrap from earlier in the process, and let rest in a warm place for about 20 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 260 C.

Fill a large stockpot (the wider the better) with water and bring to a boil.

Gently drop bagels into the water (as many as will comfortably fit without touching each other – I did four at a time and found that was enough to keep me busy with all the turning etc). After 30 seconds, use a slotted spoon to gently flip the bagels over -- simmer for yet another 30 seconds.

Then, using the slotted spoon again, remove the bagels from the water and try to drain as much water off them as possible before placing onto the greased baking sheets about 1 inch apart (I found that each baking sheet held 10 mini bagels quite well). Top them with sugar if you are feeling decadent while they are still wet (I did this while each successive batch were getting their first 30 seconds of boiling).

Immediately place sheets in the oven. Bake for 5 minutes and then flip the bagels over (before they stick), rotate the sheets and reduce the temperature to 175 C. Bake for another 4-5 minutes (or until starting to brown) and then rotate again if your oven is uneven in temperature (like mine). Bake for another 4 minutes or so (but turn off the temperature at this point, unless they are still looking a little pasty).

Transfer bagels to wire rack to cool or just leave them briefly and start eating them straight out of the oven.

They’ll keep well for a few days in a cotton bag, but store in the freezer for any longer than that.

Fun Bags?!?

2010-06-28T11:11:00.003+10:00

News.com.au are reporting that a sub-editor of a British baby magazine, Katheryn Blundell (who they have oddly described as a 'baby expert') recently wrote an article in which she describes breastfeeding as "creepy," stating that she chose to formula feed her baby because she wanted to keep her "fun bags" in shape.

Let me just trot out the disclaimer here and say that I truly do support freedom of choice for women in relation to how they feed their babies. However, calling breastfeeding "creepy" and highlighting the importance of breasts as sexual objects in a mainstream parenting magazine goes well beyond making a personal choice. It actively contributes to the culture of shaming women who choose to breastfeed their babies (or would like to) and it contributes to the narrative that men have the right to expect that breasts be kept for their sexual enjoyment only.

Just look at some of the comments attached to the article:

Matt of Brisbane Posted at 10:33 AM Today: "As a man I support this woman's decision to keep her fun bags in tit top shape."

Mark of Potts Point Posted at 10:46 AM Today: "At last, someone with common sense. "Fun bags" should be for everyone, not just the babies!"

And the result? Well the result in Britain is that only 1 in 100 British women breastfeed their babies for 6 months. Just one percent! I find that really sad. Imagine how this contributes to a vicious cycle in which breastfeeding is framed as a fringe activity, and imagine the pressure that would follow for women to "choose" not to do it in such an environment.

It is not only babies that benefit from breastfeeding. Breastfeeding produces powerful hormones that for most women increase their sense of well-being - providing a valuable boost in the sleep-deprived haze of new motherhood. They also promote bonding with your baby, which is not only positive for the baby, but can again make the intensity of the demands on your time (and body) feel so much easier to deal with.

Taking a more global perspective, creating a culture in which breastfeeding is seen as 'primitive' and formula feeding is seen as modern and desirable is extremely problematic. In many many countries the water supply is simply not safe enough to feed babies formula without risking their health and, what's more, having to pay for formula (when the free breastmilk runs out due to lack of use) means that many poor families will have to go without food and medical treatment for the rest of the family. However, women in these countries do turn to formula due to the deliberately manufactured belief that it is healthier for their babies, because it is the 'modern' thing to do.

If you don't think that Blundell's comments could contribute to this manufactured belief then read this comment:

Alicia Browne of NSW Posted at 10:43 AM Today: "I bottle fed my boys from day 1 & 100% support bottle feeding. Both boys couldn't be any healthier & I will be bottle feeding any future children I have. Not only do I support bottle feeding but I also promote it. I would also like to say to all those "breast is best" supporters, your narrowminded ideas are prehistoric & are dying out (might be why you feel you have to scream so loudly about it & force your ancient & uninfomred views on other people)."

Thanks Alicia.

Perpetual Child

2010-06-27T16:00:00.001+10:00

It occurred to me today that in many ways I have not grown up. What I mean by this is that I have failed to adopt many of the behaviours that I used to associate with being a grown-up (woman) and I really can’t see that changing. Let me give you a few examples:

1. I don’t wear make-up.

Now, of course, this could be a very grown-up feminist thing for me to do – to consciously choose not to play into female beauty stereotypes, etc. However, I have to be honest and admit that this doesn’t play a huge role in the fact that I don’t wear make-up. The truth of the matter is that I just feel silly putting it on and, well, I’m really quite lazy about personal presentation (I rarely brush my hair, for example).

When I was in high school I use to wear a star-shaped sparkly sticker on my face and glitter around my eyes. I did it for fun. It made me happy. If make-up made me feel the same way I’d totally wear it, but the fact is that it doesn’t. Take away the glitter and it’s just boring.

I bought some make-up for my wedding (a lip-liner, an eye-liner and some mascara) and after I’d put it on I really didn’t look any different. What’s the point? (I totally should have worn glitter).

2. I don’t wear high heels. I don’t even own any.

Again, this could be a very grown-up feminist thing for me to do (see above), but again the truth is far more boring. I can’t see the point of high heels. They are uncomfortable and I am quite happy with my height (which is very short, for the record). I don’t feel the need to pretend that I am taller.

Of course, there is also the sad truth that I cannot walk in high heels. I tried one memorable Law Ball while I was an undergrad at Uni and the result was quite embarrassing. Added to this is the fact that I have enough trouble finding any shoes in Australia to fit my tiny size 5 feet that I have no reason to add to my burden by trying to find superfluous shoes.

I was informed by many a person that my wedding dress was the kind of dress that (apparently) had to be worn with high heels. My response? I wore sparkly green slippers. Yes I did. (I told you that I am a child).

3. I hate wine and beer. Honestly they both taste like crap to me (unless the wine has sparkles in it, then I like it – seeing a theme yet?).

I used to think that my taste buds would mature one day and I would enjoy the taste of these drinks, but this simply has not happened. I really can’t stand them. I think wine tastes like vinegar. Fortunately, P isn’t much of a drinker and I have realised that I really don’t care. Wine is bloody expensive and I am quite glad not to have something else to spend my money on.

4. I still laugh at toilet humour – every single time.

This makes it basically impossible for me to raise my daughter to behave appropriately. I have been forced to leave this for P because, well, I am a child.

5. I like to go to bed before 9pm.

For the past three years I have gone to bed with Lily. Rarely has this been much of a burden. I like to sleep and I like to get up early.

6. My emotions are extremely easily manipulated my media.

I cry during Kleenex commercials because the puppy is so soft. I cannot watch scary movies because I get too scared (and have nightmares). I sob inconsolably during sad movies and television programs. It is quite pathetic really.

The odd thing is that my mother has never really been a typical adult (woman) either. She has never worn make-up or high heels (though probably for more ideologically sound reasons than me) and she is impulsive and has a child-like enthusiasm for life that has always amused me. I used to introduce her to people as ‘my mother the teenager’. So I wonder why I thought that I would grow up to be more ‘mature’? Where did I get these crazy ideas from?

How about you? Are you surprised by the kind of adult you have become? Has your idea of ‘being an adult’ changed now that you are one?

Bagels!

2010-06-26T18:33:00.002+10:00

We made bagels! From scratch. How cool is that?

I developed a love of bagels while living in the States as a teenager. When I first got back to Canberra there was absolutely nowhere that you could buy bagels here. Sometimes a cafe would purport to sell bagel sandwiches and each and every time they would turn out to be bread rolls with holes in the middle. So disappointing.

Over the last few years my bagel cravings have been well satisfied by the bagels from That Bagel Place, who sell their wares at the Farmers Markets on Saturdays. However, they aren't cheap (they are over $1 each) and, when I saw this post over a Angry Chicken, I though hey making our own would be heaps cheaper and also very cool.

As it turns out they are ridiculously easy. I used this recipe - as recommended by Amy - although I used a combination of plain wholemeal and plain flour rather than bread flour 'cause that's what we had on hand. Also, they took less time in our oven than the recipe suggests, so I'd recommend just playing by ear the first time and checking them regularly after the first 5 minutes.

I should also add that Australian baking paper is a lot thinner than US parchment paper and you'd be better off just greasing your baking sheets really well. Otherwise you might end up having to pick the paper off the bottom of your bagels like us...

So, Australia finally has a woman for PM

2010-06-26T16:21:00.002+10:00

Yay.

I really want to feel happy about this and, I must admit, on some level I do. It really is nice to know that no matter what happens now Australia will have had a woman at the top – and one that doesn’t fit all the typical patriarchal requirements too. Deveny is right; no matter what else, it is nice to know that it is possible.

But, honestly, I feel deeply ambivalent about this. So much of the how’s and why’s worry me and I am really not particularly impressed with Gillard herself.
First the how’s and why’s: to me this very sudden change of leadership was motivated by all the wrong principles. It was personality-poll-driven; it was Murdoch media-driven; it was big mining-driven; and it was partly driven by the NSW Labor Right. I’m worried about the implications of all of these motivating factors for the future of Australian politics. I do not think that any of them represent an enrichment of our democracy.

Next to Gillard herself: I am comforted by the fact that she has a progressive left-wing background. However, during her time in Parliament it is not these progressive values that seem to have been reflected in her behaviour. Her statements on asylum seekers are nothing short of appalling. While I never liked the substance of the ETS, I don’t see anything positive about the fact the she was part of the team that advocated for it to be shelved. And, the way that she dealt with the MySchools negotiations was unimpressive. She was unnecessarily confrontational and unyielding in her so-called ‘negotiations’ with the Teachers' Union and never appeared to actually listen to their perfectly valid concerns. This doesn’t give me a lot of faith in her so-called ‘consultative-style’ that everyone is saying will contrast with Rudd’s admittedly non-consultative approach.

All that said: I will be so very happy to be proven wrong. I’d love for things to improve.

At the end of the day, however, this isn’t my win (so to speak). I am not a supporter of the Labor party and thus their internal affairs are less connected to me than they might be for many others. My main concern in the upcoming election is how well the Greens go. I want a viable, truly progressive, third party alternative for Lily. I’ve given up on the other lot, and a change of leadership hasn’t made any difference to the way I feel.

Half-arsed feminism

2010-06-20T17:24:00.002+10:00

Did you see this article in the Australian last weekend? (I must confess that I didn’t. I saw a link to it on Rachel Power’s blog.) It’s an interview with French Academic Elisabeth Badinter, author of “Conflict: The Woman and the Mother.”

Badinter argues that a new “idealised concept of motherhood that elevates concepts of masochism and female sacrifice to unforeseen levels […] is making women across the world feel horribly guilty […and] threatening the gains of decades of feminist struggle for sexual equality”. She blames breastfeeding for keeping women tied down; co-sleeping for depriving couples of their romantic relationship, and especially their sex life; and an excessive focus on healthy natural pregnancies for an emerging tyranny of controlling the bodies and behaviours of pregnant women.

As a solution to this problem Badinter champions what she describes as a ‘nonchalant’ or ‘mediocre’ approach to pregnancy and motherhood; arguing that there should be no pressure on mothers not to smoke and drink during pregnancy; to breastfeed their babies instead of giving them formula, or to avoid placing young children in the care of others in order to resume their intellectual and social lives (and, in this context, she specifically mentions nannies and state-provided childcare, because “Of course men are deficient”).

Now, here’s where it gets tricky…

I must state upfront that I agree with Badinter’s argument that this current obsession with forcing women to live up to the ideal of the ‘perfect mother’ is regressive and is setting women back a long way in terms of our ongoing struggle for equality. I loathe the repeated attempts to control the bodies of pregnant women, to guilt trip mothers who choose not to breastfeed their babies, or to make women who make use of childcare feel inadequate. However (and there had to be a however, didn’t there?), I really think that Badinter is being fundamentally lazy in her analysis of both the roots of the problem and the solution. She is succumbing to what I call “half-arsed feminist analysis.”

Feminism, at its core, is a critique of patriarchy. It is a critique of a social system that is completely designed around the needs of men (or, at least, some types of men…). The most obvious problem with a social system that is completely designed around the needs of men is that women are going to come off second-best. Our needs are necessarily going to be sacrificed in order to ensure that men get priority.

Where I think that Badinter gets it completely wrong is that in her analysis it is the children – the babies, in fact – that are cast into the role of ‘tyrants’. Now let’s be honest here: if any group under a patriarchal social system comes of worse than women it is children. Children are not the powerful group under patriarchy. In fact, it would be very difficult to imagine any social system that could really allocate such a level of agency and power to babies. They are, after-all, incredibly vulnerable and powerless by nature. This being the case, it is absurd to attempt to solve the problem of women’s subjugation by downgrading the status of children. To do so is the equivalent of victims finding someone weaker than themselves to pick on in order to make them feel better. It might work, but it is fundamentally wrong. It is also a half-arsed solution to the real problem and the bullying will still continue.

A truly feminist approach to the problem of patriarchy is to tackle the system itself. The fundamental problem is the fact that our social system is designed around the needs and priorities of men (not women, and certainly not children). Therefore, any real, lasting solution can only come from actually challenging the way that the social system is organised. The only lasting (and morally responsible) solution has to come from fundamentally reorganising society.

Now, of course, this is not a simple task and it is not one that will be completed quickly. It has and will continue to take many generations. In the meantime it is quite true that women will continue to suffer from inequality – that is fundamental to the design of patriarchy. Part of the result of this is that when women have children they will be inadequately supported. Many will find it difficult to breastfeed those children while continuing to engage in the world in a way that feels fulfilling and rewarding. Many will find it challenging to provide the kind of family-based nurturing care that babies need in order to really thrive while still maintaining their own sense of identity and still striving to fulfill their own dreams.

This is absolutely unfair and absolutely should change. However, it is not the fault of children and a lasting solution should not involve their sacrifice. A lasting solution should involve reorganising society so that the needs of children can be met without such overwhelming sacrifices from their mothers.

What about those mothers who are caught up in the present arrangement? What about those mothers who are faced with the current reality and want a faster (albeit temporary) solution to their own challenges with pregnancy or motherhood? Well, personally, it is here I do have to agree to a limited extent with Badinter. I do think that these women should be given the latitude to work out their own solutions to these issues. I don’t see why they should have to be martyrs to the cause. It is not their fault that society is arranged the way that it is and they shouldn't be made to feel guilty for not being willing to shoulder all of the burden that it currently places on women (and, especially, mothers).

Let’s not pretend that this is a real solution though. Let’s not pretend that babies and children aren’t currently the sacrificial lambs in this struggle. Most importantly, let’s not lose sight of the real solution by letting patriarchy off the hook and conveniently casting society’s most vulnerable members into the role of ‘tyrants’.

That’s just dishonest. And it’s lazy.

When the sun came out

2010-06-10T11:27:00.003+10:00

Winter has truly arrived in Canberra and yesterday was cold. The sky was gray all day and we had several period of the kind of drizzle that leaves you feeling chilled to the bone. Last night, after a day of preschool outside (they do 'Wednesdays in the garden') Lily declared herself to be "bitterly cold" and crawled into bed just to get warm.

Today, however, the sun came back out. The sky is blue and, despite all the leaves we have lost and the general sense of botanical hibernation, the garden seemed full of life. Hopefully we can have some more of this action on the weekend!

The vessel

2010-06-09T11:05:00.003+10:00

When I was a child my mother was heavily involved in the anti-nuclear campaign that was very strong within the Australian Peace Movement at the time (the 1980s). One story from those years that has always stuck with me was the experiences of another woman in the movement who decided to try to form a strategic alliance with the pro-life (ie anti-abortion) movement.

A number of people in the anti-nuclear movement had expressed concern that perhaps these people were not the best allies, but this woman believed that, given the overwhelming threat to human life and the very survival of the planet posed by the nuclear arms race, it was worth making bridges wherever you could. I can understand where she was coming from.

Anyway, what do you think happened when this woman approached several pro-life groups about joining the anti-nuclear campaign?

They weren't interested. Not remotely.

The woman in question was understandably surprised. These people put themselves out as being so overwhelmingly concerned with the sanctity of human life that they were campaigning (often violently) for the state to force women to carry to term unwanted (and in some cases dangerous) pregnancies. It was understandable that this woman would think that these same people would be natural allies in the anti-nuclear movement. How many more lives are threatened by nuclear weapons (particularly when you place yourself back in the 1980s into the context of the Cold War)?

Through the course of her conversations with these people it dawned on this woman (who was really very well intentioned, but perhaps a little naive) that the people in the pro-life movement (particularly the central organisers) were far less concerned about the sanctity of human life than they were about controlling women's bodies. It was control rather than life that was at the core of their cause.

It strikes me that this overwhelming concern with controlling women's bodies is an incredibly pervasive one and one that underlies so very many issues that crop up for women in public policy debates. This is particularly so when those women are 'mothers', but it also applies very strongly to the bodies of young women. Look at the politics of female beauty, the politics of female sexuality, the blaming of rape victims (for placing their female bodies in vulnerable situations), and the politics of breastfeeding, just to name a handful.

Over the weekend I attended a baby shower and several of us pregnant women chose to have a bit of champagne while toasting the woman in question. It naturally led to a discussion of the issue of drinking while pregnant. We discussed the complete lack of evidence for the claims that tiny amounts of alcohol cause harm to the unborn child (thanks Blue Milk for the link), and how frustrating it is that despite this fact so many people feel entitled to police the behaviour of pregnant women in relation to their consumption of not only alcohol but also any foods that might in some way pose a risk (soft cheese, fatty foods, caffeine, etc).

This conversation (and others that I have had like it over the last few weeks - everyone in my life is pregnant right now for some reason!) was still in my mind when I saw an ABC news report yesterday entitled, "Mums-to-be ignoring booze rules." The article cites the shocking fact that,

The results reveal that 90 per cent of respondents think alcohol should be avoided while pregnant, however a third of all women surveyed admitted to consuming at least one drink while pregnant or breastfeeding.

One drink while pregnant or breastfeeding! Call in the police.

Then I made the mistake of reading the comments... The litany of mother-blame and the blatant entitlement to control women's bodies that is expressed in those comments is disturbing, but oh so very familiar. Honestly, by the time I'd finished reading through it all I felt too exhausted to blog about it. I am so over this.

But here I am anyway. Maybe someone will read this and bite their tongue next time they want to tell a pregnant woman that she shouldn't put something in her month. Guess what? It's her body! It is not a baby vessel that is collectively owned by society. And, guess what else? She is a grown adult that is perfectly capable of making informed decisions about what she does with her body.

Yes, there are issues when you stray further down the continuum into substance abuse etc and this does create real tensions between the rights of unborn children and their mothers. However, until the over-all focus of this debate is free from the overriding agenda of controlling women's bodies I don't think that we can have a sensible conversation about those more extreme (and frankly very rare) instances.

Taking responsibility

2010-06-07T20:40:00.002+10:00

[Warning: really long post ahead.]

Blue Milk (yes, I do read other blogs, sorry for being repetitive) wrote a great post the other day on the dangerous language of victim blaming that is so evident in media reporting of rape cases. In response to her post some guy decided to chirp in with a helpful 'distinction' between blame and responsibility - arguing that while victims should shoulder none of the blame, some of them ought to bear some of the responsibility for rape. You know, if they drank too much or whatever...

In response Blue Milk wrote another post in which she tried to explain why this was so very unhelpful, particularly given the fact that our culture already places far too much responsibility on women in terms of expecting them to ensure that they protect themselves against rape. It was a great post – ultimately concluding with the statement: “Rape stops when rapists stop raping.”

However, disturbingly, the guy in question didn't appear to get the point at all, because he came back (over and over again) in the comments with that same line about distinguishing between 'blame' and 'responsibility' and with the argument that responsibility can be accorded to victims of many crimes when they fail to behave in a responsible manner...

I read through the comments this morning and felt compelled to add another, but then it got ridiculously long and so I thought that it might make more sense to post it over here. Excuse the slightly tangential nature though. You see this guy’s comments and the all-too-common attitude that they represent made me think about the way in which this gendered double-standard of ‘taking responsibility’ plays out in the courts and how much it disadvantages women both in their roles as victims and even in their occasional role as the perpetrators of violent crimes. And in the interests of moving away from the issue of rape for a moment in order to take a broader perspective (and to demonstrate how this attitude permeates more than just the issue of sexual assault) I thought that I would highlight the example of homicide.

Under the common law serious crimes, including physical assault (or battery), rape and murder, a perpetrator's level of responsibility for the crime can be diminished where the victim is found to be partly responsible. This can happen when the perpetrator successfully makes use of the laws of provocation and self-defence (or diminished responsibility).

Unsurprisingly, when you know anything about our culture and our legal system, these laws have historically been developed only to take into account the responses of ‘the reasonable man’ (which should actually read ‘reasonable white man’) - meaning that they are designed around scenarios like a man being provoked into a fight or forced to physically defend themselves in the heat of the moment. They have traditionally failed to take into account the very different experience of women who are usually not physically capable of defending themselves in a one-on-one fight with a man, etc.*

The impact of these laws on women has been incredibly unjust. As just one of many possible examples, let me explain how this has affected women who have found themselves trapped in domestic violence situations.

In the early 1990s Patricia Easteal did an amazing study called "Killing the Beloved" [pdf link here] in which she researched a large number of cases in which one partner of a heterosexual couple had killed the other. In the overwhelming majority of these cases their had been an existing situation of domestic violence. In almost every single one of these cases the man had been violent towards the woman, while occasionally this violence had been reciprocated.

Where the man had gone on to kill his female partner (and this represented over 80% of the cases), it was often because he had caught her in the act of trying to leave the relationship or he was furious with her for having left him (combined this made up around 25% of the cases). In other cases it was simply an escalation of his previous violence.

"The vast majority of male perpetrator killings were preceded by histories of physical and emotional violence. The latter was exemplified in the ownership-type of jealousy which was acted out in some of the relationships and through the final act. Both physical and psychological battering did not usually cease in these cases when the couple separated; in fact at least the latter appeared to become greater."

In many cases the man was able to successfully use the law of provocation to diminish his responsibility for having killed his female partner (either in the charge classification stage or during sentencing). Here are a few examples of some of these cases:

1. In Easteal’s ‘Project case number 32’ the male perpetrator killed his ex-partner due to his jealousy over her new relationship. He saw her and her partner together, went inside, got a rifle out of the safe, and shot both her and her partner. He was able to plead guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter by relying on the law of provocation. The words of the judge in this case highlight the absurdity of distinguishing between blame and responsibility: "Provocation in this case is relevant to the state of mind and the lack of control by the accused rather than any blameworthiness of the victim."

2. In Easteal’s ‘Project case number 25’ Fred killed his ex-wife Maria during a custody dispute. Fred was allowed to plead guilty to a reduced charge of manslaughter (rather than murder) because he was 'provoked' by Maria - both because he was jealous than she had found another partner and because she had requested greater access to their daughter. It's worth noting that Maria was from the Philippines (where Fred had travelled to 'get a wife'). In analysing the sentencing remarks, Easteal notes: "The victim came across in the judge's comments as a manipulative person from another country who had harmed a naive Australian male."

3. In Easteal’s ‘Project case number 72 Tim killed his partner Samantha "by placing a rifle under her chin and pulling the trigger." (She was on the phone and he thought that she was making a drug deal.) His sentence was reduced to take into account the fact that he had been ‘provoked’ into murder by the fact that his partner was a drug addict.

"The defence of the prisoner was that he was provoked by Samantha's drug addiction. The judge expressed his agreement that the deceased had been heavily addicted to drugs, 'The prisoner said that living with a junkie was hell'."

Easteal concluded: "Once again the character of the victim appeared to play a role in the judge's decision making. She had been a drug addict, not a 'virtuous' and 'good' woman."

4. In Easteal’s ‘Project case number 59’ the male perpetrator killed his partner (who was 8-months pregnant) by stabbing her 39 times. He was able to plead to the lesser charge of manslaughter rather than murder because he had been 'provoked' by the victim telling him that their 2-year old child had been fathered by another man. (Just as an aside: he also killed the 2-year old child.)

5. In Easteal’s ‘Project case number 64’ the male perpetrator killed his partner by stabbing her 12 times. He was found guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter because he had been 'provoked' by his partner's infidelity. The judge commented:

"It was your wife who pursued him and that pursuit culminated in a brief adulterous encounter. I accept and I find that you were angry and humiliated by this."

He went on to describe the defendant's character and background as “impeccable, with an honourable and distinguished career in the army.”

In looking at the sentencing remarks, Easteal concludes that overall:

"although a few males were found guilty of murder in situations where their wife or estranged wife had been less than the cultural ideal of female virtue, overall, the nature of the victim did mitigate the sentence. Throughout the remarks, there was a clear indication of just what that ideal involves or more accurately, what it is not. Leaving one's husband, having an affair, not taking care of the child(ren), nagging one's husband, lack of appreciation for the husband's work on behalf of the family were all not manifested by the ideal woman. Thus, one of the few consistencies in sentencing and/or determining whether to allow the defendant to plead down to manslaughter was the nature of the victim and her degree of compatibility with societal norms.” [emphasis added by me]

This is the result when you try to accord some of the 'responsibility' to the victim of a crime. The result is that the perpetrator is accorded a diminished level of responsibility because some of it has been transferred to the victim. Now the commenter on Blue Milk’s post (and people who share his attitude) might think that they are not making a legal argument. They might think that they are just arguing for an ethical standpoint or for 'common sense'. The fact is that the law is entirely shaped by the attitudes of society (particularly its most powerful members - white middle class guys like the commenter in question), especially when these crimes are tried under the jury system.

Attitudes that accord some of the responsibility to the victim are the reason that victims get put on trial in rape cases and the reason that so many rapists receive relatively low sentences. They are also fundamentally sexist, no matter how much these people claim that they also hold men partly responsible when they act in a way that makes them more likely to be a victim of crime. Considering the relative positions of men and women in terms of their basic levels of vulnerability to crime, it stands to reason that it is impossible to be remotely equal when you try to dish out responsibility for someone allowing themselves to become vulnerable to crime. Furthermore, when you analyse the criteria being used to judge people's relative levels of responsibility, you realise that it is a criteria that is completely based on the 'male norm'. For men, it takes an awful lot to stray from this norm into 'irresponsible' territory, whereas for women it is virtually impossible to live up to the standards imposed. In order for female victims to be considered blameless they have to act in accordance with society's idea of the ideal woman. And even then they are far from safe.

Our culture already accords far too much responsibility to female victims for crimes that are committed against them. By and large the main action that made them vulnerable to those crimes was the 'irresponsibility' of remaining female within our patriarchal culture. At first blush it might seem reasonable to point out that there are some actions that women can take in order to reduce their risk of being raped (or, less tactfully) that some rape victims should bear some of the responsibility for their crime. However, the fact is that these comments and the attitudes that underlie them are contributing to the culture of holding women responsible for the completely unacceptable behaviour of men, and in doing so they are directly contributing to diminishing the responsibility that is accorded to those men who commit crimes against women

----

Just to emphasize the incredibly gendered dimension of societal attitudes around victim blaming, what do you think happened in those cases where the female partner had killed her violent male partner?

Easteal found, "Females who kill their partner usually do so to stop a long, and frequently escalating pattern of violent conduct against themselves and in some cases their children." In many case she killed him because she believed that it was her only option for survival. You may ask, why didn't she just leave? But please re-read the section above where it documents the fact that many female victims are killed by their partners precisely because they were trying to leave or had left. This is a well-founded fear of many victims of domestic violence.

"The female offender homicides were also almost all preceded by the victimisation of the women in their homes and were generally precipitated by the victims at (or near) the time of the killing."

Additionally, you might argue that these women should have used to the law rather than 'taking it into their own hands'. However, in an overwhelming number of the cases described above (where the female was killed by their violent partner) they had attempted to use the law to protect them (either by obtaining an AVO or reporting previous incidences to police, etc) and in all of those cases the law had utterly failed to protect them from their partners or ex-partners. (And then there are all the other well-documented reasons why it is so difficult for victims of domestic violence to leave the relationship, including issues of economic dependence, fear of losing custody of children, lack of social support, family pressure and the impact of ‘battered women’s syndrome’, etc.)

Now, you'd think in these situations that the female perpetrators would be able to successfully use the law of self-defence or provocation. After all many of them had a well-founded fear of being killed by their partners (and in some cases they had just found out that their violent partners had been raping their children), and surely being regularly subjected to verbal and physical assault ought to qualify as provocation (especially if nagging does!). Umm... no, that's where you'd be wrong.

Here are just a couple of samples of what the judiciary think about this argument:

“What has been made clear in all of them [prior cases] is that matrimonial discord, even violent discord such as was exhibited regularly in the present case, can never be an excuse for the victim to take the life of the aggressor.”
---

“It has been made very clear by the courts that the taking of a human life, even within the context of domestic violence, will not be viewed with leniency. Not even extreme domestic discord can ever be an excuse for the victim to take the law into her own hands and to extinguish the life of the aggressor.”

In almost every case the female perpetrators were not able to successfully rely on either the law of provocation or self-defence because these laws only apply when you act in the heat of the moment. For provocation your blood needs to be boiling (so to speak) and for self-defence you need to act while under direct physical attack.

This makes sense for men. If another man provokes you, or they are attacking you, then you are capable of fighting back on the spot. However, if you are a female, then frequently you will be at a serious physical disadvantage. Fighting back on the spot is likely to get you killed (see above). So, the only viable option available to you is to continue to put up with the abuse (and, in many cases, wait to be killed yourself) or to plan your attack more carefully. You need to attack while your violent partner (who has, perhaps, threatened to kill you if you try to leave, etc.) is facing the other way, sleeping, or passed out drunk. Or you have to poison him. However, if you do any of these things then you are 'acting in cold blood' and therefore are less likely to be successful in using the laws of provocation or self-defence to diminish your responsibility for the crime of homicide.

Self-defence is particularly difficult for a woman to argue successfully:

"Both in the US and Australia, there are three components of the self-defence law that may be problematic for battered women who kill: requirements that the threat was imminent, the responding amount of force equivalent, and the obligation to retreat or try to escape from an attack. The perception of imminence and severity of the assault plus the individual's perception of how much force is requisite to counter it must all be reasonable."

Additionally, any successful use of the law provocation to reduce your charge from murder to manslaughter may actually lead to a woman receiving a longer sentence, as it will be concluded that it strengthened their intention to kill.

Take for example the case of Judy who had experienced years of severe violence from her partner, Nathan, and eventually killed him by grabbing a rifle, closing her eyes and shooting:

"Judy had been anally raped a number of times by Nathan and thought he was about to do so again. Further, he had threatened, according to the judge's remark, 'that she would not leave the house alive if it was the last thing that he did'"

Judy was still charged with murder, found guilty of manslaughter, and received a custodial sentence of 2.5-3.3 years.

Or take Sue's case, where the judge found:

"There was therefore clear evidence of cumulative provocation in the face of prolonged physical and emotional abuse and of immediate provocation arising out of the events of the night before the killing during which she was struck over the head, abused, locked in a cupboard . . . urinated upon . . ."

However:

"The taking of human life is the most serious of all crimes . . . on the other hand it is quite impossible to overlook the extreme violence inflicted and the fact that both an axe and knife were used on the deceased while he was lying in bed."

Sue received a minimum custodial sentence of 5 years.

*[I should note here that this situation has been partly ameliorated over the last 15 years and a good deal of the reason for this has been the impact of Easteal’s study.

In the eye of the beholder (breastfeeding)

2010-06-04T11:21:00.005+10:00

This morning Blue Milk tweeted a link to a post by Heather at the mommypotamus which deals with extended breastfeeding and some of the myths that surround it (primarily in the West). It's a good post and worth a read (including the comments). Heather was responding to some concerns raised by a friend of hers around the issue of her breastfeeding her toddler. She devotes this particular post to just one of these myths:

"Extended breastfeeding could cause homosexuality."

You know, I thought that I'd been exposed to a fair bit of the hysteria around extended breastfeeding, but I have never even heard this particular brand of crazytalk before. (Maybe my own family situation can partly explain this gap in my exposure.) Anyway, I felt compelled to deal with a few of the underlying assumptions behind this particular concern, because they have been buzzing around my head all morning:

Obviously the first assumption contained in this particular myth is that there is something wrong will your child growing up to become gay (or being gay and growing up to express their 'gayness,' etc). My first instinct here would be to say: Why? What on earth could possibly be wrong with your child being gay? What are you afraid of?

I can imagine that some people would argue that they are concerned that their child would be exposed to discrimination if they were to gay and that this is why they hope that their children will stick with the heterosexual 'norm.' I wonder if those same people would argue that black people should avoid breeding so that their children don't suffer from racism? Perhaps people should also avoid having girl-children so that their children don't suffer from sexism? Wouldn't it be more productive to try to fight discrimination so that our children don't have to be exposed to it? Also, isn't it more realistic to do our best to raise them to be resilient enough to deal with the inevitable ignorance and bigotry that they might encounter?

Of course, I know that other people are concerned about their children becoming gay because they think that there is something wrong or unnatural with homosexuality. Frankly, however, I have nothing to say to those people on the topic except that they have some serious issues to deal with and I would rather not share them.

The second assumption contained in this myth is the idea that breasts are primarily sexual objects. Yet again I find myself with the impulsive first instinct to simply cry out WTF? Are people honestly so incredibly ignorant of basic biology to believe that mammary glands evolved for the pleasure of the male (and, for those accepting of homosexuality, female) gaze? Do they really believe that we have managed to successfully continue as a species by virtue of the attractiveness or soft touch of female breasts? Infant mammals need to suckle on their mother's milk (through her nipples!) in order to live. This is one of our defining characteristics as mammals - hence the name "mammary glands". The relative attractiveness of these glands to adult members of the species has a fairly minimal to irrelevant impact on species survival.

OK, so yes in making this argument I have to contend with those people who believe that we are somehow markedly different from 'animals'; who think that humans and animals are actually separate groups rather than one being a subset of another - because we have evolved 'beyond' other animals and are now able to do things differently.

First, I disagree with the idea that just because we can now survive without something natural by substituting it for something human-made means that we ought to - that this is somehow a positive progression. An overwhelming amount of our supposed 'progress' has only served to make us more unhealthy and unhappy and has ultimately threatened the survival of not only our own species but every other species on this planet. I have absolutely no faith in the supposed superiority of our shift away from nature.

Second, even if you think that our capacity to move away from our dependence on nature and on our biological instincts is something that should be fostered, it does not follow that these practices are no longer 'natural'. They remain natural, you are just arguing for the superiority of something that is completely unnatural.

Another concern that I have for the assumption that breasts are primarily sexual objects is that this view is completely and utterly constructed by patriarchy. (Leaving aside lesbian relationships, because that is a separate topic and shouldn't confuse this one) Who wins when part of a woman's body is defined in terms of how much it pleases (or pleasures?) a man? Not women that is for bloody sure! Essentially this view is premised on the idea of men owning women's bodies.

I believe that one of the big reasons that extended breastfeeding (and, in fact, all breastfeeding in public) is viewed with such suspicion and hysteria is that it is an act of direct rejection of this claim of ownership. When a woman breastfeeds her child (particularly in public) many people are constructing or receiving the message:

"My breasts do not belong to men, they are mine and I will use them in a manner that is directly threatening to your desire to see them as sexual objects. I will use them to nurture and nourish my child and to increase a non-sexual bond from which you are excluded."

Or, if they view the child as a sexual being* (particularly once the breastfeeding child gets older than 12-months or so), they may alternatively be constructing the message as:

"Although my breasts are primarily sexual objects, I am excluding men from owning them because they belong solely to my child who is taking their own incestuous pleasure from them."

Of course, I'm not arguing that many women are deliberately sending out these messages (I highly doubt that any woman has ever deliberately sent out the second one!) or that many people are actually conscious of constructing it in such a way, but I do think that this is what happens. Why else would people view such a natural and healthy act as somehow suspect and disturbing?

It would be so nice if we could just laugh at these ridiculous attitudes. Sadly, we can't be so complacent. You see there are serious impacts of people having these crazy ideas. The most obvious is that many women will wean their babies before they are ready because of the incredible societal pressure to do so and to take up their anointed role as sexualised yummy mummies. This is unfair on both women and babies who could both benefit significantly from continuing their breastfeeding relationship until it concluded naturally due to the pressure-free preference of one or both parties.

It also means that many women who do breastfeed have to constantly suffer from a lack of societal support for what can be an exhausting and time consuming job. They are seen as misguided in their decision to do it and, perhaps, self-indulgent, and so many people feel entitled to deny them social support for what they are doing, by not:

creating better leave entitlements so that mothers can spend more time breastfeeding their babies,
creating safe and comfortable spaces in workplaces where mothers could breastfeed or express,
creating childcare arrangement in or close to workplaces so that breastfeeding could continue easily after a mother has gone back to work,
creating welcoming and comfortable places in public where mothers can breastfeed their babies,
providing support to breastfeeding mothers such as a cooked meal, or helping hand or even a glass of water,
you get the idea...

However, that doesn't even touch on the most serious risks that are posed by these dangerous attitudes. The assumption that breastfeeding is a sexual act can also lead to women being ejected from public places or off plane flights for simply feeding their babies. Far worse, it can also lead to women having their children removed from their care and being criminalised and incarcerated. As Heather mentions in her post this exact scenario took place in 2002 in Dallas Texas. In that case a couple had their children summarily removed by authorities after a photo lab developed a photo of their 12-month-old breastfeeding and reported it to authorities. The couple were then arrested on criminal charges of "sexual performance of a minor." They were then found guilty based on no other evidence than the photo in question. In 2002!

This is why these ideas of not just crazytalk; they are downright dangerous.

*And, of course, this particularly attitude leads naturally into a discussion of the sexualisation of children, but that is quite evidently a post for another day at this stage...

Something a little less serious

2010-05-31T16:42:00.004+10:00

A catch-up post in dot points:

Lily is completely obsessed with the Faraway Tree series. She has had it read to her (and listened to it) so many times now that she is talking in Faraway Tree language: "It was simply marvelous." "No, that's just horrid." etc... She is also making up "Saucepan's silly songs." They are quite funny.

Lil's also been sick for over a week now. She's been up and down in that time and seems to be properly on the mend now, but it's been a long week. Poor kid.

I am heading up to Sydney on Thursday to do a faculty presentation on my thesis and meet with my supervisors. It will be very useful, but I am sort of dreading it. I know that the list of things that I still need to do will be long and daunting...

A lovely friend of mine gave us a pressure cooker as a present for leaving her our house to sit while we were in Mexico (they were moving to NZ and needed somewhere to be after their stuff had gone on ahead). It was ridiculously generous since it was just as beneficial to us to have people staying in our place and taking care of the garden etc. But, it has also been a revelation. I LOVE IT. I really like cooking, but it can be quite stressful to try making dinner when Lil is already hungry and is getting impatient and demanding. The pressure cooker means that everything is so quick to make and I can do other things while dinner is cooking. Win, win, win. It also makes cooking dried beans so very much easier, which means that I am resorting to far less cans.

Lily and I finally planted our bulbs last week. I am hoping that it wasn't too late, as I love seeing the daffodils and tulips popping up in the Spring. I helped Lily to make little labels for the pots, but we didn't make them water-proof enough and they are fading already. Fortunately it will be fairly obvious what they are (if they survive).

Winter has really arrived here in Canberra. It is cold. It has also been raining quite a lot, which is very un-Canberran. The absence of blue skies is starting to get me down a little - though, of course, the garden is very happy.

My pregnancy is progressing well. We had a 20 week scan a little while ago and found out that we are having a boy. A new adventure! We are planning to call him Charlie. He is a very active little munchkin - especially in the early hours of the morning and whenever he can hear his big sister's voice.

I made this banana bread with choc-chips on Saturday morning. It was truly delicious. I can highly recommend the recipe. (But, of course, you can rarely go wrong with anything from Molly).

That's all for now, I think. I hope that you are well. I plan to get back on tops of things when Lil is back on her feet. Expect some Wintery photos and maybe even a few lunchboxes.

Discrmination by another name...

2010-05-17T23:03:00.006+10:00

[To give you some context as to why I am writing this: see this post at Bitch PhD (and particularly check out the comments), this post at Feministe (and, oh my goodness, check out the comments); this post at Blue Milk; and this post at Student Activism.]

The funny thing about in-built privilege is that so-often the bearers of said-privilege really have no idea that they are exercising it or that they have come to feel themselves entitled to it. Instead, they justify it with all sorts of excuses and by reference to the prevailing status quo - as though 'the way things are' are, by definition, 'the way things ought to be'.

A few examples (past & present):

White privilege under Apartheid South Africa
(This continues to be exercised everywhere, don't get me wrong. It is just easier to point to blatantly obvious examples.) This privilege consisted in part of carving out 'white only' spaces and having draconian rules for when and how black people (and people of other colour) could enter such spaces.

Another less overt form of discrimination (and one that continues in most places in the world) is that many white people treat people of colour with less respect than they treat other white people. They talk down to them or overlook them altogether. This can mean that they receive a message that they have less value than white people, that they do not have their needs taken into consideration, and even that they will not be served in a shop, etc.

This is discrimination, pure and simple.

Male privilege under patriarchy
Historically, and still in many places and cultures, this privilege consists of carving out 'male only' spaces and occupations into which women might only be admitted if they conform to the bahavioural standards established to conform to the dominant-adult norm (i.e. act as though they have someone at home taking care of the house/children/etc; do not discuss their children/family obligations/'women's issues' etc; quit if they become pregnant/married; think & act in 'male' ways; etc). "Obviously" some occupations and spaces have remained off-limits because they are "clearly" unsuitable (having been established around the needs of the dominant-males). This might include anything from men's clubs, to voting, to governing, to military or front-line positions, etc...

Another less overt form of discrimination is that many men treat women (particularly women of a particular age, weight, appearance, etc) with less respect than they treat men. They talk down to them or overlook them altogether. This can mean that they receive a message that they have less value than men, that they do not have their needs taken into consideration, and even that they will not be served in a shop, etc.

As a feminist it is fairly easy for me to label all of these attitudes as discrimination, pure and simple.

Able-bodied privilege
While sometimes this is exercised in a very blatant manner, with people openly excluding disabled people from accessing certain spaces and (particularly) occupations, most often this privilege is exercised in a more subtle manner. Many many public spaces have been constructed in such a way that many disabled people have difficulty accessing them and/or difficulty in making use of them (i.e. shops & restaurants without ramp access and with insufficient space to fit a wheel chair, parks with stairs, offices located on higher levels of building with no lifts, a whole range of places that do not have accessible toilets, etc.). All of these spaces have been constructed around the capabilities and needs of able-bodies adults and we take this status quo for granted. In fact, many people view requests for alterations to be unreasonable or even as an expression of privilege!

Another form of this less overt form of discrimination is that many people treat people with disabilities with less respect than they treat able-bodies adults. They talk down to them or overlook them altogether. This can mean that they receive a message that they have less value than able-bodied people, that they do not have their needs taken into consideration or even that they will not be served in a shop, etc. (This may sound familiar by now, but, of course, it plays out in different ways and in different contexts than it does for able-bodied people of colour or women).

All of these practices and attitudes are discrimination, pure and simple.

And then we have children...

Adult privilege within our culture
This consists of carving out 'adult only' spaces into which children may only enter if they adhere to behavioural standards established to conform to the dominant-adult norm (i.e. adhere to a particular decibel level; remain seated rather than moving around; keep all emotions firmly in check; think & act in 'adult' ways, etc.). "Obviously" some spaces will remain off-limits because they are "clearly" unsuitable (having been established around the needs of the dominant-adults). This might include anything from cinemas, to a certain class of restaurant, to theatres, community meetings, or any of these "after a certain time of day", etc...

Children also suffer from less overt forms of discrimination. Most public spaces have been constructed in such a way that children have difficulty accessing them and/or difficulty in making use of them. Often it will be difficult for them to use the toilet without assistance and the sink will be too high for them to wash their hands. Their feet will dangle from the chairs and their natural inclination to stay mobile and to explore their environment will be constrained by tightly packed tables, low-level breakables, or a general atmosphere of intolerance. All of these spaces have been constructed around the capabilities and needs of able-bodies adults and we take this status quo for granted. In fact, many people view requests for alterations (most often made by parents, rather than children themselves due to the lack of agency of most children) to be unreasonable or even as an expression of privilege!

Additionally, most adults will feel entitled to treat children with less respect than they treat (able-bodies) adults. They talk down to them or overlook them altogether. This can mean that they receive a message that they have less value than adults, that they do not have their needs taken into consideration or even that they will not be served in a shop, etc...

Once again I'm going to go out on a limb and label all of these attitudes as discrimination, pure and simple.

Update: I had intended to point you in the direction of Anji's excellent Adult Privilege Checklist at the end of this post and I forgot. Hopefully, some people will still wander over there now...

...

In case you just want a small taste of it, here's a few samples of some of the comments at Feministe and Bitch PhD (all emphasis is mine):

I think there should be more of a social expectation of parents to consider the adults around them. I think that parents should not only expect to be talked to when their child acts up, and they don’t respond, but also expect to apologize to the stranger they may have upset or disrupted.
...
In fact one parent asked me, when I told her to discipline her child if they should stay home until their child behaves, and not go out. I say yes! Most likely they made the choice to have that child, and a part of making that choice is the responsibility that comes with it.
...
[Question:] "Tell me would, would you tell a disabled person to leave a restaurant because they were being to loud or making you uncomfortable?"

YES. If a disabled person was in a restaurant banging silverware on the table, or yelling at the top of their lungs, then YES it would not be bigoted or prejudiced or whatever of me to be both annoyed by it and to request that person leave the restaurant.

There are certain restaurants, I think, where it’s more “family friendly” and this kind of behavior is tolerated (I’m thinking of places like Red Robin.) But a fancy, quiet restaurant? Not acceptable, whether it’s a disabled person or a child.
...
Part of the “interacting with society” you think is so important includes getting told off, coldly glared about, and snidely whispered about when you behave like an idiot. Consider our contempt for your children just another useful learning experience for them.
...
I don’t like being around kids, the same way I don’t like being around loud, obnoxious people who monopolize conversations and can’t talk about anything except themselves, and I make no apology for that. If your child can behave like a reasonable human being [read 'adult'] in public, then good for you. But I get really, really tired of watching parents let their kids run amok while shrugging off the damage with “S/he’s only a chyyuuld.”
...
I, for one, would not tolerate a grown adult behaving that way [screaming for a drink] in a public place. Actually, not many people would. So if you’re really going to try to equate children with adults when deciding where and when they should be allowed in public, then you really ought to consider the social responsibility that that expectation creates. As an adult, I would NOT get away with things that children do in public for very long. So if you want your toddler to be considered the same as me, an adult, then your toddler should be responsible for behaving in an adult manner.
...
I don’t mind children in spaces like restaurants, as long as the children are well behaved. This largely is the responsibility of the parents (and largely the parents’ failure when the kid is a monster). […] I have zero patience for or tolerance of children who don’t behave.
…
I have never been and never will be fond of kids or want to be around them much. That has nothing to do with being feminist or antifeminist. It has to do with the fact that I don't like kids any more than I like peas. I do not want to hear children screeching in an expensive restaurant at 9:00 at night, when they should be in bed. I've seen parents bring their children into bars at night! I am civic-minded and I accomodate other people's children in appropriate situations as much as possible, but don't tell me that I have to start dressing more modestly because your sisters have children now (my now ex-boyfriend).

Now I think I need to have a lie down.

Naked Motherhood - part one (the horror hours)

2010-05-10T20:12:00.005+10:00

I started pre-natal yoga classes the other week and I picked up this book called Naked Motherhood by Wendy LeBlanc.

Oh how I wish that I had found it before I had Lily; before I even decided to get pregnant. Honestly, I could have been so much better prepared.

In the book Wendy LeBlanc explores all those 'hidden truths' about the experience of motherhood - from the fact that pregnancy can often unexpectedly knock you for six, to the fact that so many women are so unprepared for the reality of labour that they wind up traumatised, to the myth that your life will go back to normal within a few months of the birth, and so on...

In researching for this book, LeBlanc surveyed and interviewed a diverse group of women around Australia and so her conclusions are not based solely on a small circle of friends or her own experience. Instead she provides a wealth of examples, in addition to statistic information to back up her findings. And some of those findings are pretty telling:

43% of mothers surveyed expected to be exhausted during the first twelve months of their first baby's life
90% reported an impact on coping; 63% in the severe to extreme range

67% of women surveyed expected their sleep to be interrupted by their first babies
84% reported an impact on coping; 63% in the severe to extreme range
almost no-one expected these interruptions to go on for more than three months
all expected their babies would sleep for long periods of time throughout the day

Logically I knew that babies woke up often during the night and that my sleep might be interrupted while Lily was very young. I was nervous about this, because I have always been very attached to sleeping and felt that I 'needed' at least 8 hours every night in order to function. I figured that after the first few months we would work out how to settle her easily and that I would have the chance to sleep during the day, 'since babies sleep so much'. Ha.

Lily slept for a maximum of 40 minutes at a time during the day until she was about nine months old (and for most of those she was attached to me) when she finally started sleeping for about 1 hour & 20 minutes twice a day (for a short blissful period). Often it would take me over an hour to settle her beforehand. She slept for no more than 3 hours at a time at night for almost 3 years. For long periods she would wake up every 40 minutes for a feed. Sometimes she would have only just come off before the 40 minutes was up and so only 5 or 10 minutes would elapse between feeds. To say that I was exhausted almost feels like an understatement. Sometimes I felt as though my very sense of self had been shattered.

I was utterly unprepared for this.

Another thing that LeBlanc covers is the 'horror hours'. Again if I had even heard of these I had not listened. As she puts it:

Studies have shown that the average baby cries for three hours per day, the majority of which occurs between the hours of 6pm and 9pm. These are the 'horror hours'.
At this end of the day the mother is tired too. She may have been on duty for twelve hours already. Still there are hours stretching ahead filled with walking and consoling and feeding and cajoling before she can sit down and relax-or sink into a blissful sleep herself. By five in the afternoon a mother may feel she has given every inch of herself throughout the day and now has not a drop of giving left in her. Yet, somehow, she must go on giving of herself until either her partner arrives home to relieve her or her baby sleeps. [p.43]

Lily had reflux when she was born and this gave her terrible heartburn that got worse as the day went on. By the time it got to about 5:30pm she was exhausted and in pain and would start screaming. At first we had absolutely no idea what to do. We tried everything. We walked her, bounced on the swiss ball (something that often worked at other times), rubbed her tummy, gave her a warm bath, sang to her, rocked her, fed her, etc... and she just kept screaming.

I hate the sound of babies crying. It breaks my heart and I want to stop it by comforting them. But this feeling is nothing compared to how I felt about my own baby. I would have done anything to make her feel better. I felt like I was a complete failure as a human being (and, of course, as a mother) because I couldn't make her feel better. It felt as though the sound of her crying was ripping me apart. Again, I never expect to be challenged so completely.

(Eventually, we did discover that if I put her in the hug-a-bub (sling) just before the horror hours and sang her to sleep then we could walk around outside and keep her asleep for the duration of the horror hours. We started an evening ritual of wearing and walking Lily around the city and didn't go home until after 8:30pm when we knew that if she woke she was less likely to scream. AND she grew out of this stage at around 2 months.)

So, yes, those would have been useful things to prepare myself for (if I had been willing to listen), particularly because LeBlanc shares a wealth of sensible suggestions for dealing with all of these issues.

However, what I like the most about this book is the way that she uses it as an opportunity to tackle another huge facet of motherhood - the fact that it brings you face to face with the ugly side of TEH PATRIARCHY.

To be continued in Part Two (I had really better go to bed)...

A little culture

2010-04-27T14:08:00.005+10:00

El Castillo, Chichen Itza

The Market

Group of a Thousand Columns

Mayan ruins in Tulum (by the beach!)

In order to make us feel like better people (and 'cause we were actually interested) we did leave the beach a couple of times while we were in Mexico in order to take a look at a couple of Mayan ruins. The first one that we visited was Chichen Itza, a large Mayan city near the modern city of Valladolid. The most impressive feature is the large pyramid-like structure called El Castillo, but since you can't climb that, Lily had more fun mounting The Market and mucking about in the Group of a Thousand Columns.

We also trotted along to the ruins at Tulum, which were particularly cool for being right on the ocean (they were built on cliffs that look out over the Caribbean sea and there is a perfect little white sand beach right in the middle of 'town'. So cool!) It certainly made for a picturesque setting.

We only spent about an hour & a half at each site so as not to make it boring or exhausting for Lil' and, honestly, that was nice for us too. They are seriously impressive, but after traipsing about in the hot sun for that long I was happy to walk away with my fairly superficial impressions. I'm shallow like that.

Beach life

2010-04-27T14:01:00.003+10:00

Evening by the sea in Isa Mujeres

Dancing with a dolphin. (She got a kiss too!)

The view from our cabana in Tulum

Punta Allen in the Sian Ka'an Biosphere Reserve

After the brilliance that was this holiday (now sadly departed) we have decided that all of our family holidays with small people will be on the beach. Right on the beach. But preferably somewhere that does not require 22 hours in the air to get to...

Isla Mujeres, Mexico

2010-04-07T10:28:00.003+10:00

Exhaustion and sickness fading fast. Sunshine, warm turquoise waters, sand and really big juices taking over. This feels like a real holiday.

A surreal week

2010-04-02T04:44:00.004+11:00

It's been a long, strange week and it isn't quite over yet.

First, I said goodbye to my baby and Paul at the airport (which broke my heart) and jumped on a plane to the US.

Then I flew for far far too long and spent far too much time in airports and horrible, demeaning security clearance queues.

Then I finally arrived (36 hours later) in Syracuse, NY for a conference on the Right to Water (the subject of my thesis).

The conference itself was great. The other presenters were not only really lovely, interesting people, but their presentations were stimulating and challenging and gave me heaps to think about as I finish off my thesis.

However, I was a complete mess. I didn't really sleep on the plane (for the first time ever) and then I managed not to sleep during my overnight lay-over in Chicago (due to a combination of jet lag and feeling Lily's absence like a hole in my heart), and so by the time I arrived in Syracuse I was utterly exhausted. I was the kind of exhausted (and dehydrated, I think) that made my eyes stay bloodshot for three days straight, my skin redden and prickle and my nose bleed continuously. It was quite unpleasant.

Despite this, I am glad that I went - particularly because it gave me the chance to catch up with a very special, friend from high school (I attended high school in the US for a time). She took me to a vegan cafe and we talked and talked and talked late into the night (while I inhaled protein, after having been fed on carbs & zucchini for two days straight). I love those friends where it doesn't matter how long it has been since you last saw them, you can talk to each other as though you were just picking up a conversation from the day before. The only sad part about it was that I then had to leave and digest the fact that her and I live so very very far apart.

Anyway, now I am in LA. I have finally had some sleep, but now I have a nasty head cold (hardly surprising really). I'm waiting for Paul and Lily to arrive. They were due in this morning, but their flight was delayed out of Sydney for 8 hours (poor loves) and so they won't be here until this evening. No doubt they will be utterly exhausted and so I plan to spend today resting up so that I can do everything possible to help them to recover once they get here.

Oh, I can't wait to see them. I want to crush them both with snuggles!

Quick catch up

2010-03-25T10:14:00.003+11:00

Argh, where is the time going? I can't keep up with life at the moment. But I did want to just stop by and post a quick catch up - a little list of the most significant things going on for us right now.

I'm pregnant. Yep, odd declaration for a bullet point I know, but life's been a bit like that at the moment.

I am flying to the US on Sunday to attend a conference on the Right to Water... without Lily. Ahhh! I am a little sad about this and anxious about how it will go, but I think she'll be fine. She's gotten so big recently.

The following Thursday P and Lily are flying to the US to meet up with me and then we are all flying to Mexico! Yay!

We'll be in Mexico for three weeks and plan to do lots of beachy stuff and a bit of cultural stuff too - like visiting some Mayan ruins etc... Most significant of all (as far as Lily is concerned), we are also planning to swim with dolphins.

I am massively behind schedule with my PhD due to 3 months of severe nausea and vomiting. Yes, I was lucky enough to get hyperemesis gravidarum (severe morning sickness) and it wasn't very conducive to thesis writing...

I am a little bit stressed right now...

I hope that you are all going really well and plan to be back some time soon with some more interesting stuff and maybe some photos of faraway places.

White (& red) lunchbox

2010-03-20T06:00:00.003+11:00

I didn't realise until I'd finished making Lily's lunchbox yesterday that it was basically all white. In a vague attempt to remedy the situation I added some grapes and tomatoes, but still, it was basically a white lunchbox...

Specifically it contained two corn thins with ABC spread (almond, brazil & cashew nut); an egg white (she hates the yellow part); half a pear; and those token tomatoes & grapes.

'Slug' noodle lunchbox

2010-03-19T09:44:00.003+11:00

Yesterday morning Lily woke up and said, "I want tofu in my lunchbox today."
"OK," I replied.
"With broccoli and zucchini," she added.
"OK. Would you like rice or noodles with that?" I asked.
"Noodles. You know mama; noodles are like slugs," she said.
"I guess they are kind of like slugs. And broccoli is like trees, isn't it?" I replied.
"Yes. And zucchini is like fish."

Mmm...

Anyway, so I put udon noodles in her lunchbox with broccoli, zucchini, cauliflower and tofu; and I popped in some watermelon and rockmelon to round things out.

All up it was a very successful lunchbox. It came home completely empty, except for a little pile of tofu in the corner. The tofu I used was left over from our Vietnamese take-away the night before and I have to admit that it didn't look very appetising cold... Next time I'll put in some freshly cooked tofu from the fridge.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

2010-03-18T13:23:00.004+11:00

I have to admit that I was drawn to this novel solely because of the title. I love the idea of someone loving books so much that they would steal them. And, I should say upfront, that it delivered far beyond my expectations.

What I didn't realise was that this book is set in Nazi Germany during the Second World War and that it was sad. Really sad. I'm quite glad that I didn't know either of these things, because they would have put me off reading such a brilliant book. I'm really struggling these days with coping with sadness in books, and there really are so very many books and films about the holocaust, aren't there?

Of course, my ignorance didn't last very long. Within the first few paragraphs our narrator, death, is fairly explicit about the emotional roller coaster that we are about to board and the historical context in which it will take place. But, you see, by then I was hooked. That's how long it took: one paragraph, maybe two.

The book is the story of a young German girl, Liesel (or "the Book Thief"), who is traveling by train to Munich with her mother when she watches her younger brother die. This is when Death first encounters her and hangs around long enough to watch her steal her first book, The Gravedigger's Handbook, from the cemetery where they bury her brother.

Liesel continues on to Munich where she is left with a new foster family, the kindly Hans Hubermann, who plays the accordion and occasionally paints houses, and tough-as-nails Rosa Hubermann, who calls her Saumensch or pig (which we will come to understand is a term of endearment). She begins school at the age of 10, unable to read, meets her neighbour, soon-to-be-bestfriend, Rudy Steiner, and plays football in the street. Every night she wakes up screaming after dreaming about her brother's death and Hans is there to comfort her and, soon enough, to teach her to read.

Things take a darker turn when the family takes in Max Vandenburg, a young Jewish man, and hide him in their basement. The tension created by that courageous act is then increased as bombs begin to fall on Munich.

Despite the grim subject matter, this is such a beautiful story. At its heart it is the story of a young girl coming of age and learning the power of words and of love. Her relationships with Hans, Rudy, Max and even Rosa are so carefully developed and feel so utterly real that it is impossible to distance yourself from emotional vulnerability that is part and parcel of such strong friendships.

As for the sadness, well I'm not giving anything away when I say that I cried myself to sleep after finishing this book. Our kindly narrator essentially gives it all away in the first few pages. But that is what makes this book so wonderful. It is not held together with the suspense of wondering what is going to happen, it is held together with the story of why we should care.

Cheese & crackers lunchbox

2010-03-18T06:00:00.001+11:00

In yesterday's lunchbox I packed a cheese & tahini sandwich; some more cheese & rice crackers, some grapes; and a salad of avocado, cucumber, capsicum & a cherry tomato. We also popped in a soy milk popper in the hope that it might help her relax at nap time (which is after lunch). Previously Lily napped almost everyday at preschool, but she hasn't napped for over a week now and she is fading quickly in the afternoons...

When I picked her up the crackers & cheese were gone, as were the soy milk; half of the grapes and part of the salad, but the rest remained. She decided to eat the cheese sandwich while we were still gathering her stuff though, so all up it was a successful lunchbox.

Sushi lunchbox

2010-03-17T10:59:00.004+11:00

In yesterday's lunchbox I packed some tofu & avocado sushi with some little packages of soy sauce; some salad and a little tub of cream cheese for dipping; some grapes & rockmelon; and a tub of berry yogurt.

You may have noticed that we have gone back to the old lunchbox. Sigh. Sadly Lily has informed us that she prefers this one, because it fits inside her "Elmo lunchbag" (photo below). Double sigh. Stupid branded kids crap. Boo hiss.

Anyway, this was too much food, again (possibly because they cooked pesto pasta for morning tea and she had lots of it!). She ate her yogurt and all of the tofu sushi, plus a bit of the fruit and salad, but the rest of it had to wait until afternoon tea. Even then the avocado sushi was dismissed.

Lily’s ‘big bed’

2010-03-17T10:35:00.002+11:00

Over the last few weeks Lily has decided to try sleeping in her own bed.

Your reaction to that last sentence will probably depend on what you think of co-sleeping. Some people, for example, will be thinking, “It’s about bloody time!” For them Lily has been ‘too old’ to share our bed for quite some time. In fact, for many it was always a bit of a suspect thing for us to do.

In contrast, my reaction was fairly mixed. It was one of pride, of excitement and, in all honesty, of deep sadness.

I loved sharing our bed with Lily. From the moment we brought her home my instinct to physically comfort her at night was overpowering. My sleepiness dulled the shock of all the changes that this new life involved and I found that I could just nurture (and feed) her without thought. Sharing the bed with her Papa also meant that they got to bond quickly despite his full time job.

As time went on Lily began to snuggle us back. The warm feeling of her little arms wrapped around me and the rhythm of her breath would often lull me back to sleep when I woke during the night.

These last few weeks I have missed her little body next to mine, but I am also enjoying her pride in claiming her own space and we’re still finding time for plenty of cuddles – especially when she creeps back in during the night.

---

Do you have a co-sleeping story to share? Perhaps you'd like to enter it into the Co-Sleeping Essay Contest? See Blue Milk from more info.

Three! (or my adventures with veg jelly)

2010-03-16T11:24:00.005+11:00

On Sunday Lily turned 3 and we had a party for her. Here she is with the 'pool cake' that she insisted on having.

I had a bit of drama making the 'jelly' in the middle. There is only one brand of veg jelly crystals in Australia that seem to make a lime flavour (none of them do 'blue') - Vitarium. However, Coles only stock their raspberry flavour and although Vitarium said that they would post me a sample of their lime flavour, it never arrived in the mail. So, on Saturday night I followed a recipe that P. googled for making jelly with agar agar (which, by the way, costs $18 for 50 grams!).

Can I just strongly recommend that you do not follow that recipe yourselves? When I followed the instructions to the letter I ended up with a few large lumps of solid agar agar jell suspended in lime cordial juice. It didn't look appetising (not that I find jelly particularly appetising, to be honest). So, in a small panic, I heated the whole lot back up on the stove and found, to my relief, that it did dissolve again. I then added some extra water to cover any that may have evaporated and (after it had cooled somewhat) popped it in the fridge overnight.

In the morning I got the 'jelly' out of the fridge to find that it was now a very solid lump. I let it warm up a little, but nothing changed, it was like a massive, bowl-shaped jelly baby. Ahhh!

So, in the end, I mashed it with a potato-masher and spooned it into the middle of the cake... Looks 'fabulous,' doesn't it?

On a more serious note, poor Lily got a fever on Sunday afternoon after all the guests had gone home and was quite sick until sometime on Monday night. She had had a pretty exhausting week at preschool (a week of no naps) and I think that the excitement of the party may have just all been too much for her. (Hopefully it wasn't the 'jelly'.)

I'm just glad that she was OK for the party itself, because she had such a good time.

Tempeh wrap lunchbox

2010-03-13T09:00:00.001+11:00

Friday's lunchbox was a tempeh wrap (with a bit of extra tempeh on the side); a local autumn plum; some rice crackers & cream cheese; and a blueberry & vanilla yogurt.

When I picked Lily up from preschool her crackers and cream cheese were gone, as was her yogurt (but she told me that she dropped it and I don't know how much she had before that happened) and a few pieces of tempeh. The wrap, however, was still mostly intact and the plum had barely been touched.

I asked her why she didn't eat her lunch and she said that she was too tired. I think her preschool is just fabulous, except for one little detail: they don't sit the kids down to lunch until 1pm. To me that is absolutely crazy! Lily is generally ready for lunch around 11:30-12 (aren't many adults?), and she is exhausted by 1pm. I've talked to them about it, but nothing seems to have changed...

To be fair, they do have a decent morning tea around 10:30-11am with fruit & veggies, and yesterday the children had cooked a 'cheesy vegetable bake' and eaten that with their morning tea (and this is fairly common). So, I may be overreacting. I do, however, wish that they would eat a little earlier.

Fortunately most of the food didn't go to waste. We had tofu, veggies & rice for dinner, and I added in the rest of her tempeh & the veggies from her wrap to her plate.

I covet

2010-03-12T09:23:00.000+11:00

image via design inc.

I have been yearning to put a tree on the wall in Lily's room for ages now. The problem is, of course, that we rent. In Australia this means that we have extremely limited rights to do anything at all to our home (i.e you need permission to put up a picture hook!) and we only have a 12 month lease, so anything we do do may have a pretty limited lifespan...

image via home sweet home

Despite all this, I thought that I would share some of my recent finds with you. Maybe you'll be able to use them? Or, maybe they'll still be available next century when we can afford to buy our own house...

First up there is this gorgeous fabric wall sticker from I love my messy room.

I particularly like it with the addition of animals and the fact that it is fabric is pretty cool too. Apparently it can be re-used and will come off the wall without damaging it...

Next up is a wall sticker from the wall sticker company. This one is made of vinyl, but it is a Lara Cameron pattern that I have always loved...

It's also available in wallpaper, which would be very cool (but would really really need to go on the wall of a house that you weren't renting...)

Soba noodle lunchbox

2010-03-12T06:00:00.000+11:00

In yesterday's lunchbox I packed a soba noodle salad with broccoli, tofu & sesame seeds, next to it are a few sugar snap peas and a little tub of miso sauce for the noodles, up the top is a nashi pear and a few tiny teddies.

Sadly Lily was exhausted by lunchtime and barely touched her lunch. Fortunately, she ate it all up for dinner (when served alongside some fresh miso soup), so all was well in the end.

Oh, and it turns out that she prefers her nashi pear peeled... Not sure how long I should cater to this preference though - isn't there a ton of nutrients just below the peel?

Lunchboxes... back with a vengeance

2010-03-11T10:24:00.002+11:00

One of the things that compelled me to start blogging again was our recent acquisition of a new lunch box for Lily. It's a Laptop Lunchbox (bought from here) and I love it. (Pathetic, aren't I?). Anyway, be prepared for an onslaught of lunchboxes for a little while as I work through my excitement...

This is a picture of yesterday's lunch: animal pasta & cheese, with a little tub of tomato sauce, some watermelon, a salad of capsicum, tomato, avocado & cucumber and some blueberries & yogurt.

In case you were wondering: Yes, it was too much food. She demolished the pasta, ate most of the watermelon & blueberries, but that poor salad was barely touched... Next time I think I'll pack less pasta.

I'm back

2010-03-11T09:34:00.005+11:00

Dear blog

I've missed you. Without you I seem to have stopped recording and reflecting on the little moments that make up my life. Despite good intentions I haven't written a single 'letter to Lily' and I've barely taken any photos. To make matters worse, I don't seem to have more time either. In fact, I've realised that you were a great solution to writer's block and I've been a little, well, blocked without you.

So, I guess what I'm saying is: will you have me back? I can't promise to be faithful or devoted, in fact, perhaps it would be best for the long term if I avoided even thinking such thoughts. But I do promise to respect and value what you add to my life.

love
Cristy

So long and thanks for all the fish

2009-10-25T10:51:00.004+11:00

From out of nowhere, it would seem, I have completely lost the desire to blog. It's gone.

Anyway, I thought that it was time to acknowledge this fact and take a break from blogging. I think that it's time to move on.

If I get the urge to blog again, and it is a big 'if', I think I'll probably start something new. This blog is starting to feel old and cumbersome.

Thanks for all the comments, fascinating posts, sense of community, friendship, etc. You (and I hope that you all know who you are) have been amazing. I don't know how I would have survived the last few years without you. Honestly. I really don't.

Take care.

Cristy

A week of mornings (2nd edition)

2009-09-18T14:10:00.001+10:00

My "humourous" feminist mother

2009-09-17T12:47:00.008+10:00

Second Update: I woke up in the middle of the night last night and started to feel really guilty about this post. I don't think that it was fair of me to be so critical of Mel's post. Blogging isn't like writing a journal article or even an Op Ed in a newspaper. You often jot down a post in a short space of time and there isn't always the time to ensure that every nuance is clarified etc... I have often seen another post (or media article) that I thought was interesting, linked to it and then used it as a jumping off point to quickly explore an issue that popped into my head. I never give these kinds of post a lot of thought and I don't generally expect other people to either.

Mel's post was really very reasonable. She simply mentioned that she has noticed some feminist mothers being concerned about raunch culture etc and responding by banning Barbies or pink and then she brings up her own concerns about whether or not this is the most productive response. I think that I just over-reacted to the deliberately provocative title and to the last paragraph, which seemed to come a little bit out of the blue to me.

However, it was a reasonable post and I realised last night that my response might easily been read as a bit of an attack on Mel and that wasn't my intention. I think that I was really just responding to the bigger debate that this seems to reflect - and to my generally frustration with the characterisation of feminists as "angry".

So, apologies for any implications that I was attacking Mel's position. And please read the post below (which I think I'll edit a touch to tone down anything that might seem overly personal) as more of a response to that broader social debate.

UPDATE: Oops, probably should have also said: "Happy birthday Mum!"
----
The other day I read Mel Campbell's post on the Dawn Chorus entitled "How Can Feminist Mums Avoid Being Humourless Childhood-Ruiners?" I have only recently started reading the Dawn Chorus, but I've been enjoying its high level of analysis from a feminist angle.

Mel starts off the post by referring to Jo Case's review of 'Getting Real - Challenging the Sexualisation of Girls' over at Kill Your Darlings, and then segues into her ambiguous feelings about the response of some feminist mothers to the problems of raising girls in a world of raunch culture and the commercial sexualisation of girls.

Mel summarises these responses as including: "ban[ning] Barbies and pink things, ... refus[ing] to buy slutty pre-teen clothes and ... stand[ing] up to schools and organisations who condone sexualised behaviour and attitudes." Mel argues that "this is the most confronting aspect of parenting – especially of girls." And asks,

Are you going to be the kind of humourless, daggy mum who interferes in everything that’s cool and is a source of mortification to your children (”You just don’t GET it, Mum!”), or are you going to be a hip mum who helps your kids navigate pop culture rather than trying to restrict their access to it?

Fair enough question, I think, but then she goes on to conclude,

One of my main worries as a feminist is that feminism is so often about being angry and disapproving; it rarely seems hip unless it concedes something to raunch culture. Just last week I was thinking, “No wonder people say feminists are unattractive; nobody likes hanging out with angry people.” Perhaps we should also consider what we’re teaching children about feminism if their main experience of it is telling them what they’re not allowed to do.

And I must admit that this conclusion made me feel a little uncomfortable. (I should also acknowledge that it would have been good blog etiquette for me to have actually commented on Mel's post. However, I was excited to hear about Jo's new blog venture and clicked over immediately to see what it was all about - or rather googled it because it was oddly not linked to in the post. And by the time I had finished having a bit of a look around and had commented on Jo's post, Lily woke up from her nap and it was really all over for me and the internet...)

My initial reaction would be to say, well 'people' often say that feminists are "unattractive" because those same people believe that the most important quality for a woman is her physical attractiveness and, therefore, that calling someone unattractive is a particularly powerful put-down. The truth of the put-down is completely irrelevant, because its purpose is merely to silence those uppity women who are daring to question the status quo.

Secondly, in relation to the broader debate over banning Barbie etc. (which comes out in the comments of a number of the threads that have popped up about this issue), I don't really understand the focus on stuff. It is hardly the sole domain of feminist parents to refuse to buy copious amounts of useless stuff for their children and I am utterly confused by any criticism of parents for doing so. But that is probably a discussion for another day.

Thirdly, why on earth would parents want to be 'hip'? I certainly never wanted my parents to be hip. How tragic. From the perspective of a teenager "hip" is the exclusive domain of the young (and those who market to them and remain, somehow, in a state of permanent teenagehood - like rock stars). A parent who tries to be 'hip' is often the most embarrassing thing in the world. Besides, there are just more important things for parents to do that worry about being 'hip'. They need to actually focus on nurturing their children and helping them to navigate the world while they are still too immature to be able to do so on their own. For that, it is important to have principles and to actually adhere to them even when it might be unpopular to do so. At the end of the day, children respect people with the confidence to stick to their principles so much more than they respect someone who is just trying to 'fit it'.

To be fair, Mel may have been referring to parents being aware of and permissive of popular culture and willing to allow their children to engage with it. However, I guess I just don't agree that feminist parenting would be any less aware or permissive of popular culture. I think that there is still a lot more to popular culture than 'raunch culture' - although it is becoming frightening pervasive - and I also think that a feminist response to this culture is to engage with it and to empower our children to critically engage with it.

Again, Mel does seem to be suggesting this approach in the conclusion of her post. However, I guess I would add that perhaps the complicating factor is in the decision about when your child is old enough to engage critically with 'raunch culture' and when they are still young enough to need your protection in the form of active avoidance. To me that isn't really about being "daggy," but more about making a careful judgement about your child's development.

But that brings me to my final response. I, like a few other people, have decided to use Mel's post as the start of a conversation about what "positive" feminist parenting actually looks like. (And, by the by, I'd like to actually acknowledge that the vast majority of feminist parents are, in fact, incredibly positive parents. It comes with the territory.) And that, in a very long winded manner, brings me to the actual subject matter of my post: What positive feminist parenting looks like.

My mother is a feminist (and was throughout my childhood).

For me this meant that I grew up believing that my gender had nothing to do with my capabilities or my right to do whatever I wanted with my life and my body.

I remember Mum telling me about some research for her book (about gender construction in the primary school) and how she had asked a group of primary-schooled aged boys and girls what they wanted to be when they grew up. The answers were predictably varied: a doctor, an astronaut, a journalist, a teacher, a mother, a jockey, a lawyer, etc... However, then she asked them what they thought they would actually be when they grew up. The answers were depressing. Most of the boys thought that they would grow up to become exactly what they hoped to, or at least something fairly close (the astronaut thought he'd probably be a pilot). However, most of the girls thought that their ambitions were unrealistic. The girl who wanted to be a doctor thought that she would become a nurse, while many a journalist or lawyer thought that they would actually grow up to be a secretary or a housewife.

Me? I wanted to be an actor, but thought that I would probably become a lawyer. My reasoning was that the way that female actors were judged by their appearance would bother me too much and I would end up wanting a job that would give me the power to challenge all of this bloody discrimination and injustice.

For me it meant that I grew up with the learned capacity (at a very early age) to critically analyse media and reject the messages that it contained about what being a "good" woman meant.

I remember Mum asking me what I thought about the fact that the mother in the Meadow Lea commercial didn't sit down to dinner with the family, but instead just stood there and served them. I thought that it was odd, really, and then, once she explained the significance of it, I thought that it was crap.

I still can't look at a container of Meadow Lea without feeling annoyed.

For me it meant that someone was on my side when I was confronted with the myriad of sexist messages that permeated my childhood.

I remember coming home from Brownies (mini-Girl Guides) one evening with a stack of pancakes. We had been instructed to cook one for every member of our family except ourselves in order to learn the value of being selfless and serving others.

Well!

Mum was furious and insisted that I eat all of them myself. In front of my brother. (Although, I think I probably ended up sharing them with him, since it wasn't his fault). Then she pulled me out of Brownies and I got to join Cubs (mini-Boy Scouts). Cubs was way more fun. There were only about 4 or 5 of us girls, but we had a ball learning to canoe and playing cops and robbers in the pitch black Canberra pine forests.

Mum also suggested that I note down how often my teachers paid attention to boys or girls in my class and what it was that got their attention. I found it so interestinh to see that girls almost always got attention for being "good" (i.e. quiet, still, attentive, sitting up straight...), while boys almost always got attention for being "disruptive" (calling out, hitting or pinching the girls, talking to each other, etc.).

Another time Mum attended a parent-teacher night and my (Year 2) teacher told her that I had a tendency to "dob" too much. Mum knew that she was referring to my issue with a boy that used to hit, kick and punch me and to spit on my head in the stairwells at every opportunity. She told my teacher that she was extremely disappointed in her blame the victim mentality in relation to bullying, particularly since she thought that she had taught her more than that at teacher's college. (It just so happened that Mum had been my teacher's lecturer at Uni.)

For me it meant that someone was always giving me positive body image messages.

Mum always told me that I looked great and should have the confidence to wear what ever I wanted, even when others started to suggest that (since I was 11) maybe I should be on a diet (in order not to get fat) or that I should hold my stomach in while wearing a swim suit so as not to look unattractive!

For me it meant that pink and Barbies held little interest.

Finally, while Mum never banned pink or Barbies from the house, I found it hard to find them very interesting for long. Once you saw Barbies as disgusting caricatures of what a completely objectified woman should look like, it was hard to find them very fun to play with. And pink? Well, I've just never been a fan.

Lily's lunch - penne, tempeh & fruit

2009-09-17T08:41:00.001+10:00

Today's lunch was penne with zucchini, mushrooms, tomatoes, olives and artichoke pesto; some fried tempeh, some mandarin, a strawberry, corn thins with tahini and some rice crackers.

I think that I might have to start branching out from the corn thins. Even I am getting bored of them...

Lily's lunch - avocado, tempeh & fruit

2009-09-16T09:00:00.000+10:00

Today's lunch was tofu, avocado, cherry tomatoes, apple, pear, a hard boiled egg, and some corn thins with tahini.

At least, that's what I made originally... Then Lily spotted it and ate half the egg and the corn thins. So I made some more corn thins with vegemite and put the half egg in with the avocado.

I guess it doesn't really matter when she eats the food, does it?

Gathering flowers

2009-09-16T06:00:00.000+10:00

Yesterday afternoon Lily asked if we could go outside to pick flowers. It was a beautiful afternoon (we have been blessed with the best weather lately) and so we went outside in barefeet and wandered about the front garden picking flowers.

It's funny, native flowers aren't always very big and bold and sometimes they seem to take a while to reveal themselves, but soon we found that our garden was full of colour. So we brought just a little bit of it inside.

I really should remember to do it more often...

Lily's lunch - fried rice and fruit

2009-09-15T08:04:00.001+10:00

Today's lunch was fried rice with tempeh, avocado and cherry tomatoes, half a banana, some pear, apple and (frozen) blueberries.

Yep, we bought some Tupperware... Don't you just love that blue?

30 months

2009-09-15T07:38:00.001+10:00

Dear Lily

Yesterday you turned 2 and a half. That's exactly half way to 5. Oh my.

This past month has been a good month (except for a little period of sickness, that we'll just ignore, OK?). As the weather has become warmer we have been able to get and about more, which has been good for our general happiness and sanity.

My favourite thing about this past month has been your tendency to speak as though you are living in a story book. You often add, "said Lily" to the end of your sentences and frequently try to put words into our mouths by using the same method. As in: "Can we go outside? Yes, said Mum."

In line with this new habit you have also been very keen on hearing stories about yourself. Or, at least, fictional stories in which you happen to be the main character.

"Tell me a Lily story" you will ask me at least once a day. Often you are even more specific; "I want the grandma and grandpa one." Or, "tell me a Lilipilli story." (My mother calls you Lillipilli). Or, "I want the party one."

It certainly keeps me on my toes. I can't believe how fascinated you seem to be by my incredibly boring stories. All I seem to do is describe the minutia of a day. They generally start with "Once upon a time there was a girl called Lily. She lived in a house on a hill with her mama and papa. One day Lily... went to visit her grandparents/flew up to Darwin/decided to have a party/went on a picnic etc..." Then I proceed to describe the details of travel or food preparation (it's always about the food in the end for me), arriving at a new place, packing up again and going home to bed. Really, someone should give me a book contract for this stuff.

Other than your love of living through stories, this month has also been marked by us having a lot less time together. Seven mornings a week you are whisked away by Papa or Kelli while I do my PhD. You come back home after lunch for your nap and then we only get a few hours together before dinner.

It's weird spending so much less time with you. I miss our excursions (mornings are really the best time for excursions). I think that you are also finding the adjustment a little challenging at times too. Although you seem to be going pretty well - you certainly go off each morning very happily - it has made you a little more clingy and a little more mama-focused recently. Hopefully that will start to settle down as you become used to the new routine.

Finally, as the weather has improved, the sun has been rising in the sky earlier and earlier lately. You are not a morning person. Not at all. But the bright sunlight has been waking you up very early lately. At first you try to go back to sleep. "It's too bright," you will complain to me, and roll over. But you eventually give up and so we all get up. Early. Oh so early. This has been a little challenging for all of us and is leaving our tempers a little bit frayed by the end of the day...

Fortunately daylight savings is around the corner and it should make things a little easier again. In the meantime, we will just have to focus on our enjoyment of the outdoors and the beauty of the sunrises.

love
mama
xo

Floriade

2009-09-13T07:50:00.003+10:00

We went along to Floriade yesterday afternoon to romp among the flowers. It was such a lovely day and I was feeling very keen to get out into the sunshine after PhD-ing all day while Lily and P went to the Farmers Markets and to a 3rd birthday party (I love birthday parties, so I was very sad to miss out on this one).

We spend far too much time trying to find the kids' section, which wasn't in the same place as last year, and once we finally picked up a map we were all too hungry to trek over there and so, instead, we found a cafe and bought some wedges. It was so lovely sitting outside in the sunshine looking out over the flowers (I especially love those red tulips - more photos to come I'm afraid) and listening to the music. I envision lots of weekend afternoons will be spend there this Spring.

As the afternoon drew to a close, we found a big patch of grass and encouraged Lily to have a bit of a run around. Then, worn out and happy, we all headed home for dinner.

So happy that Spring is here.

Molly and Mart

2009-09-12T07:12:00.004+10:00

Last night we trekked out to the Yarralumla Woolshed for the Handmade Market. I've been reliably informed that there were 50 retailers there last night and that there will be 150 today. 50 was probably enough for us, but if you are in Canberra and didn't go last night (which is hard to believe - it felt like all of Canberra was out there!), then you really should check it out today. Think about Christmas! (Yep, still stressed about Christmas...)

We wandered around for a little checking out the lovely handmade stuff and then followed our noses to the food. However, the line was looking a bit long and so we wandered into the shearing pens and found the lovely Nanette from Rummage. (Have you read Rummage? You really must. Nan's blog is just gorgeous and will leave you feeling all nostalgic and rosy.) It was lovely to meet Nanette since I've been reading her blog for quite a while, and it was just as lovely to see her gorgeous creations.

Lily was particularly taken with her peg people and so I told her to choose her favourite.

She chose a very dapper gentleman with flaming red hair, despite my attempts to steer her in the direction of my favourite. So, I did what any sensible person would do and bought both of them ('for Lily,' of course!).

Then Nanette gave Lily a gorgeous hair clip to match her jacket and so I had to take some photos.

Well, Molly and Mart (as they have been called) have accompanied Lily everywhere ever since. They had breakfast with her this morning and then took a tour of the house in her pushcart.

As I type this, she is holding one in each hand while watching Playschool.

I am just kicking myself that I didn't buy a few more for a certain birthday girl that Lily will be seeing today...

The big chop

2009-09-11T14:53:00.003+10:00

I have always had long hair. Always. Well since I was about 3 or 4 at least. That was when I cut off all my hair in order to look like some big girl at my school that I admired.

Since then whenever I have thought that it was time for a change I have been talked out of the idea by any and every hairdresser that I have asked to cut my hair.

"Oh no," they'd say. "You need to have long hair. There's just so much of it. You need the length to weigh it down."

"Oh, OK," I'd reply and have yet another trim. Boring. Boring. Boring.

Anyway, I'd had enough and so I did a google search for hairdresser recommendations in Canberra and came across quite a few for Michael at Edge Hair in O'Connor. Well, I thought, if he's good then he should be good enough to figure out how to cut off my hair. And so I made an appointment and went in this morning.

At first, he too was reluctant to cut off my hair.

"I think we'll keep it long," he started with.

"Are you sure that it won't work above my shoulders?" I pressed.

"Let me think about it," he said.

I went off to have my hair washed and when I got back he was all business. "We're going short," he said.

Yay!

A week of mornings

2009-09-11T08:03:00.003+10:00

My creative space : Lily's dress

2009-09-10T16:56:00.003+10:00

So I haven't actually gotten very far since last week... but at least I have cut out the pieces for one dress.

Lily chose this pink gingham and I am not really a fan and so I am trying to add a bit of detail to it to keep it interesting. I was thinking of adding some ribbon and maybe stencilling a few silver butterflies on it. What do you think?

For more lovely creative spaces, check out Kootoyoo's place.

Lily's lunch - couscous & chickpeas

2009-09-10T14:51:00.000+10:00

Today's lunch was couscous with chickpeas and veggies; rockmelon & grapes, some chunks of avocado and some plain corn thins.

Lily's lunch - soba noodles & dumplings

2009-09-10T08:42:00.001+10:00

Yesterday's lunch was soba noodles with stir-fried tofu, snowpeas, mushrooms & a dumpling; pear, apple & grapes; and a vegemite corn thin (yep, can't get away from the vegemite!).

She was desperate to eat the noodles etc before she left the house and I wouldn't let her. That was pretty silly in hindsight, because she was over it by lunch and only ate her grapes...

Lily's lunchbox: animal pasta and tempeh

2009-09-08T19:10:00.003+10:00

Today's lunch was animal pasta with tempeh, a banana, some rock melon and some pineapple.

And, on a complete tangent, I came downstairs today to see Lily sitting on the ground with an old laptop battery on her lap. She was pretending to type on it. She looked up at me with a cheeky smile and said, "I'm doing my PhD."

"Oh," I replied. "What is it about?"

"Katie and Olly," she answered.

Later, in the car, she mentioned her PhD again. "And it's about Katie and Olly isn't it?" I asked.

"No," she replied. "It's about something else."

"Oh, what's it about now?" I asked.

"Um, I'm not sure yet. I need to listen to some music to think about it."

Fair enough.

Polaroid photos

2009-09-07T14:53:00.000+10:00

I love the look of polaroid photos. They hold such wonderful memories from my childhood. That instant gratification was such a novelty - and how cool was it to watch it process before your eyes?

However, Polaroid have stopped producing their film and so slowly the cameras and those funky photos will be on the way out. Sad isn't it?

Luckily, you can simulate a small part of the experience - ie just the look of the product - with rollip. You just upload your photo and select a range of "polaroid' effects for it and voila.

Fun.

Just a hint though: keep the image small when you upload it. I tried to upload a slightly bigger file (900kb) and it was very slow and then didn't work at all...

Happy Fathers Day

2009-09-06T16:44:00.002+10:00

I hope that it was full of picnics and dancing (or other fun stuff).

Getting organised

2009-09-06T15:12:00.000+10:00

[image credit]

As a child I was intensely disorganised. My room was a mess. (Once, we had mice in the house and discovered that their nest was at the bottom of my cupboard - ewww!). I struggled to submit my homework, not because I found it difficult, but because I (a) forgot it was due; (b) had misplaced it; (c) had left it until the last last minute and didn't have everything I needed on hand; or (d) some combination of the above, etc.

I also lost my jacket at the beginning of every winter and froze for the remainder of the season because I was too scared to tell my parents (scared of their disappointment in me, not of punishment - I can't really remember being 'punished' as a child unless you count being sent to your room to calm down for a few minutes). The "lost property" box at school was full of my possessions, but not all of them made their way to it. I remember one time I was given a super cute umbrella by my aunt and uncle. It was bright blue and had a wooden head with soft fluffy hair. It was cool. I loved it. The first day that it rained I was so excited to take it to school with me, but it never came home. I am still sad about this.

[I should mention here that the fact that I moved house every weekend (and, later, every second weekend) between my Mum and Dad's houses probably didn't help me out very much. However, it didn't have the same effect on my brother and so there was clearly more to it than that.]

Anyway, I think that you probably get the picture. Being disorganised was actually a real problem in my life. It plagued me.

For some reason all this changed when I moved to the States with my Dad (aged 14). The change of country, school, living arrangements, (and maybe just the age that I was at?) all seemed to effect me and I suddenly found that I was really organised. My room was clean (aided, no doubt by my lack of stuff and the fact that I didn't have to move every second weekend). I always knew where everything was. I handed in everything on time. In fact, I often completed things early.

The thing is: it was great. Instead of constantly feeling stressed about the chaos that I was creating around me - instead of rolling from crisis to crisis - I was, actually, in control of my life. I even became a bit of a control freak, if I'm going to be honest.

I think that I have found a bit of a happy balance now, which is good. But the interesting thing is that this loss of control that I did experience when I was so disorganised now comes back to haunt me in my dreams. I frequently dream that I am back at school (usually some conglomerate of all of my past schools mixed together) and have suddenly realised that I haven't done an assignment that is due. Often these dreams spiral into the realisation that I haven't actually attended a class that I've been enrolled in all semester and now have to sit the exam... Or that I have actually managed to miss school altogether for the whole semester without realising and now have to sort it out without FAILING. These dreams never fail to stress me out.

Anyway, lately P and I have been trying to organise our house. We have been de-cluttering like maniacs, attempting to institute a bit of order on our stuff - including our paper. (Argh, why does paper seem to breed in our house?) It's been very satisfying.

We went through our bookshelves the other week and culled every novel that we had read and didn't want to read again, and books that we were never planning to actually read. We also culled all of our out-of-date reference books. Those books filled many boxes. It felt so good.

We also cleared our closet of clothing that we no longer wear, and even went through all the stuff that has been accumulating in our garage. So good.

To celebrate all this de-cluttering we decided to host a swap party yesterday. Friends came over with all their unwanted stuff and we all got to rummage through the piles and take whatever we wanted.

It was fun. Everyone left with less stuff than they brought - we is a good thing for all of our clutter-free home aspirations - but everyone still picked up a few things that they were really happy with: a funky watering can, a wooden glockenspiel, new novels to read, a new green cardigan...

I had a short frenzied moment gathering myself some (more) kitchen utensils (I have a kitchen utensil problem), including a cute cookie cuter, a wire whisk, and a fancy grater thingy. I also picked up two books. But I got rid of far far more stuff than I took, so it was OK.

We also ate cupcakes, rock buns, pide, hummus, crackers, fruit and some scrumptious brownies - and drank some 'sparkly' drinks (as Lily calls them).

Like I said: it was fun.

The best part is that Zoe is coming back around today to pick up all the left over stuff for her son's school fete. Goodbye clutter!

Once daily

2009-09-04T15:00:00.000+10:00

I have been meaning to take (at least) a photo a day for some time now and to find a place to put them all in order to have a nice little record of life. However, I have been too disorganised to actually do it.

No longer.

The lovely Claire from Loobylu has come up with a great idea for a site where lots of people can share their daily photos. It's called Once Daily and it's cool.

Anyway, I have signed up and, in my usual scattered fashion, started with three albums: mornings, food and my creative space. In all likelihood I'll just stick with mornings (which is where the above photo belongs), but I thought I'd give myself a bit of flexibility.

Are you going to join too? Go on!

My creative space: summer dress project

2009-09-04T07:43:00.000+10:00

It's warming up and, since she has pretty much grown out of the ones I made her last year, I thought that I'd better start sewing Lily some new dresses. Last week I squeezed in enough time to trace and cut out the pattern (I chose size 3 and now I'm hoping that it's not too big...). Then this morning I got Lily to pick out her favourite fabrics.

She immediately went for the pink gingham, due to her current obsession with pink, and then picked a few fabrics that I only have small amounts of. Finally I was able to steer her in the direction of the cute yellow floral fabric that I bought 3 metres of (on sale). For the smaller bits of fabric, I thought that I would pick up some plain cotton in a complimentary colour and add on some pockets or applique.

Oh... and I had to add Amy Karol's new book into the photo - Bend the rules with fabric. It arrived yesterday and I crazily missed the post and so I ran out to get it from the postbox this morning. So exciting! From the little flip through that I've had so far it looks just as cool as you would expect. I am so excited to get stuck into some projects from within it's pages.

For more creative spaces check out the lovely Kirsty's blog.

Card making fun with 'Handmade Hellos'

2009-09-04T07:40:00.001+10:00

I have always loved the idea of making my own cards. I have even attempted it on a number of occasions.

Sadly each time I have come hard up against the sad reality that I really didn't have a lot of inspiration. Once I moved past the age at which it was acceptable to hand draw a dodgy Santa on the front of Christmas cards I got a little stuck (although some may argue that this is always acceptable they clearly have not witnessed my lack of artistic skill firsthand). I think that a lot of this had to do with not having the right equipment on hand, but that was partly because I really didn't know what the right equipment would even look like. I had no real vision for what my handmade cards would like either.

Enter Handmade Hellos. This book contains 25 projects for making cards for (almost) every occasion. It's great. In addition to providing clear instructions and a list of all of the equipment that you will need to make them, it's packed full of inspiration. Some of the projects do require fairly special equipment, such as a gocco machine or lino blocks & tools, but most of them just rely on cardboard, scissors & glue, which is great.

Here are a couple of sample pages from the publisher's site

I like this thumbprint Humpty Dumpty. Actually , fingerprint pictures are a great idea in general.

These little accordion books are cute too. They'd be a lot of work though. You'd want them to be for someone special wouldn't you?

Anyway, I hope to make lots of these cards in the next few months in preparation for Christmas. Yep, I'm still thinking about Christmas. Mad, I know.

Loving : Alabama Stitch Book

2009-09-03T07:20:00.002+10:00

I got this book in the mail yesterday morning and managed to wrangle enough snippets of time out of the day to read it cover to cover by nightfall. This was no easy feat, but it really was that good. Natalie Channin has put together a stunning book, filled with beautiful projects that I genuinely wanted to make immediately.

Her style is so appealing to me. She bases all of her projects on recycled t-shirts, which is cool in addition to being sustainable. But most of all I love the detailing that she incorporates into all of the projects - the beading, the stenciling and, especially, the reverse applique, which I had never seen before.

I really really want to make this skirt. In fact, I found myself dreaming about it all night last night.

These journals are gorgeous too. They would make great Christmas presents, wouldn't they?

Is anyone else starting to get worried about Christmas?

No? Just me?

Image credits: from the book, but specifically borrowed from the editor's site.

I must say, Melanie Falick has a bit of a magic touch with craft books. Every book of hers that I have seen is utterly gorgeous.