Christmas 2011

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...

Flower girl

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

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 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...).

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 begged 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 a few times.

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

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.

Snow and sunshine

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.

Marriage equality

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.

Happy Birthday P

Yesterday was P's birthday.

And so I made him a special dinner: handmade ravioli (stuffed with spinach & feta), followed by orange & almond cake (smothered in maya gold chocolate ganache).




I tried to make it early in the afternoon, but it was not to be... and so we ate a little bit late.

Still it was worth it.

Walking with Grandpa (EDINM - Photo 3)

My Dad came down from Sydney yesterday to bring Midnight (his dog) to stay with us while he and his partner take a holiday in Europe. To Lily this was like Christmas. First, she got her beloved Grandpa in the house for a whole day. And now she gets to keep Midnight at our place for a good few weeks.

We took Midnight for a walk last night and I snapped this shot of her holding Grandpa's hand and watching Midnight run around like a "mad fool". I think you can see the sheer contentment in her eyes.

Also, for good measure, here is another shot of the autumn leaves - this time from our neighbourhood. I am really enjoying this process of focusing a bit more on my photography. Now I just have to take photos of something other than Lily and leaves...

Easter

We had a lovely Easter long weekend. My mother and her partner came down to stay with us and spent the weekend on 'operation front yard blitz' - clearing the burnt stuff out of the front garden in readiness for some new veggie patches. It looks a little bare now, but it's nice to have all the dead stuff gone and exciting to think of the future veggie beds.

We also had a picnic out at the Cotter with P's family (and I got to use my new favourite picnic food containers - aren't they cute?). Lily had a ball going on 'adventures' along the river with her cousins (and aunts, uncles & grandparents). She also got a new Easter book that she loves.

Lily barely consumed any chocolate over the weekend. This surprised me a little. I had expected her to be a little more interested (not that I'm sorry that she isn't!).

Mum and her partner may be moving back to Canberra in a few months. This would be great, except for the fact that we would have to move out of their house...

Lily turned 25 months old yesterday, which means that I am late with my letter.

Lily has started falling asleep earlier in the evenings (due to the end of daylight saving) and I'm loving the extra time for reading, doing and uninterrupted conversation. She is also getting up earlier and generally this has also been a good thing too. Mornings have become more relaxed and enjoyable.

Autumn is well and truly upon us and it is glorious. The light is beautiful. The weather is perfect for being outdoors in the day and snuggling up with blankets and tea at night. And the colours of all the deciduous trees are just stunning.

We are heading up to Sydney in the morning to spent time with my Dad and his partner, and to celebrate Dad's birthday. I plan to make him a very rich chocolate cake. Yum.

I hope that you had a lovely long weekend.

A long drive

My brother and I spent our childhood summers with my grandparents in their apartment on the Gold Coast (Surfers Paradise, to be precise). To get there we would drive up with them from Canberra - usually on Boxing Day. For some crazy reason Grandpa liked to do the 18-hour drive all in one go and so the day would start at around 2am. We would cram the boot full of our luggage - clothing, shoes, books, musical instruments, a rainbow of zinc cream (remember coloured zinc?), and, of course, our pink boogie board for riding the waves.

One year my brother and I were sitting in the car waiting to get going, when I noticed that Dad and Grandpa were having a very serious conspiratory discussion in the garage. It turns out that our boogie board wouldn't fit into the boot and they were trying to remove the large quantities of toilet paper that Grandma had packed in order to fit it in. You see, the toilet paper had been purchased on sale and Grandma, the Ultimate Bargain Hunter, was determined to take it up to Queensland with us rather than buy full priced toilet paper on arrival.

I don't know how the issue was settled, but I do know that our boogie board made it up to the beach that year.

Summers with my grandparents were bliss. I would get up ridiculously early and watch cartoons on television. I remember writing in my diary one year that "Jem" was my favourite, but that I wouldn't admit it to anyone. It wasn't much of a secret, but I knew that diaries were supposed to contain secrets and so I was fishing about for something meaningful to write (to go along with my daily lists of activities and food consumption that tended to fill the pages of my diary in those days). Naturally my brother then read my diary and teased me about this for ages.

After cartoons we would eat breakfast. At home we had Weetbix for breakfast or porridge in winter. But that was it. At the Gold Coast Grandma would buy those mix packs of cereal and we would get to try a different little box every day. Oh the joy! Naturally we fought over the coco pops. Chocolate at breakfast was just so exciting (even if I knew in my heart of hearts that there was something really not-quite-right about it).
Post-breakfast, our days would flow smoothly between the pool (downstairs), the beach (across the road), and a daily dosage of cricket or tennis on the television. For extra excitement Grandma and Grandpa would often take us down the road to the Paradise Centre. The Paradise Centre was home to the Grundies Amusement Parlour. Here we could play games to collect prize tickets. After a summer of collecting these tickets we would sometimes have enough to 'purchase' a small plastic toy. Somehow this was seriously enticing. Grundies also had waterslides and a ghost train. The first time I rode on the ghost train a "ghost" jumped on to the back of our car and I was so terrified that I punched him in the face. I feel kind of bad about that now.

Downstairs in the Paradise Centre was an ice cream shop. Grandpa loves ice cream. Seriously. He was always very keen to share this love and so we often stopped for ice cream during our holidays. I remember how proud he was the first time that I upgraded to a double scoop and finished it. When I upgraded again to the extra topping of cream and chocolate fudge, he was grinning from ear to ear.

We also went out to dinner a fair bit while we were up there. Grandma and Grandpa loved the All-You-Can-Eat style places. We would go and pile our plates high with all manner of food. I remember proudly announcing how many courses I had consumed. "Well done," Grandpa would say, smiling. "How many have you had?" he would then ask my brother (who always outdid me). On several occasions my brother even ran around block a few times in order to fit a bit more in.

At the end of our time at the Gold Coast we would pile back into the car and take the long drive home. We would arrive brown all over from 5 weeks of constant sunshine and full of so many happy memories.

On Thursday I took Lily out to my grandparents' place for a visit. She played in their garden with them - directing Grandpa to rake up the dirt and admiring Grandma's veggie plot. I sat back and watch them together and thought about all of those childhood summers during which they gave me so much. I hope that she gets the chance to spend some of that kind of time with them too.

[Play along with Pip's Words & Pictures - "A long drive" or check out the other contributions]

Today:

• Paul and I celebrate our 4th wedding anniversary.
• My grandparents celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary. (Makes ours look pretty short doesn't it?)
• I took Lily in for her third proper day of childcare (6th visit) and she cried on and off for the whole 2 & 1/2 hours, even though I never actually left her side.
• I called the childcare centre and let them know that we wouldn't be coming back - despite having waited for a year to get a spot at what is probably one of the best centres in town.
• I felt much better after making the phone call and wondered why we ever accepted the place in the first place (apart from an obvious desire to actual complete my stupid PhD).
• I made plans for how to best use the time that I have from P. and other family to complete my PhD without using childcare.
• We are going out for a celebratory wedding anniversary dinner - as a family.

Congratulations Grandpa

Some people in your family you will never live up to, but they will always serve as a wonderful source of inspiration.

A few more wedding photos

My brother and his lovely (now)wife were married over the weekend in Watson's Bay.

It was such a beautiful day. The setting was stunning. The ceremony was moving. The bride and groom looked wonderful and happy. The reception was tons of fun - especially the Jewish dancing that started things off with a bang. Lily had a ball being surrounded by family and stealing the spotlight whenever possible. And we ended the night in a gorgeous "luxury suite" on the harbour. Bliss.

Congratulations Jono & Nat. Thank you for a wonderful day. I hope that you are recovering well.