Fit your own oxygen mask first
I ate my breakfast at 12.10pm today.
Here’s why:
and on and on and on….
All I wanted was for this to magically fill
As I have tried to explain to my poor, long-suffering husband – it’s not what I have to do it’s how much I have to do. And the fact I never finish a task. Never.
I have been trying to get back to work over the last few weeks. I’ve been trying to figure out how best to wean the wee man. I’ve been trying to keep my house in some kind of order – and it’s just all too much sometimes.
But it’s OK – because I have learned some valuable lessons along the way:
- It’s OK to spend a fortune on organic fruit purees because when you tried to make your own last night the smoothie machine woke the baby
- It’s OK to think a smoothie machine is the same as a hand blender
- It’s OK to think a whisk might do the job so you don’t need to buy a hand blender
- It’s OK to spend ten quid on a hand blender
- It’s OK to completely lose the plot when you lift the bin lid and it still hasn’t been emptied.
- It’s OK to cry a bit when you mention the unemptied bin on the phone to your husband
- It’s not OK to make him the scapegoat for everything that’s untidy in the house
- It’s not OK forget to eat so that you have no fuel to deal with your crazy day
- It’s OK to call your granma and ask her to help out with the pureed carrot recipe
- It’s OK to ask granma how to store pureed carrot
- It’s OK to call your dad and ask for advice on dealing with stress
- It’s not really OK to burst into tears so that he has to pull in on the way to an important meeting and console you rather than prepare his notes
- It’s OK to admit that you’re finding it all a bit overwhelming
- It’s OK to ask for help
- It’s OK to blog when you really should be tackling that three foot to-do list
Filed under work
Endings and beginnings
Summer cheated on me – it abruptly ended our brief love affair in a fortnight of gray skies and relentless rain.
At the same time, the wee man ended his love affair with breast milk. A few days of fussiness led to a day of complete rejection. I tried one more time and he bit me. My mother-in-law grabbed her own boobs in horror, I gasped like a landed trout and that was the end of that. To top it all off, he had a rare sleepless night and, as I was sharing a room with him at my parents’ house because Rod was in Aberdeen overnight, so did I.
As I trudged downstairs at 7am to make his bottle, I was grumpy as hell – and then I opened the curtains.
Glorious sunshine greeted me, beaming from fresh blue skies. Delighted, I packed him into the pram and headed for the park. It was like summer had to be properly washed away before autumn could assert itself.
The trees are just beginning to turn, there are still colourful wildflowers hiding in amongst the foliage and the ducks seem optimistic. So I will take my cue from them.
I identify with swans - gliding across the water while paddling furiously underneath
Filed under hello World
Time travel
My youngest sister once told me: “No one will ever invent a time machine. If they had, they would have come back to tell us.”
I’ve always felt I could mentally time travel by reading my old diaries. I’ve written about my days since I was 11 years old; the box containing my scribblings is my prized possession. If I’m interrupted while engrossed, I can almost feel myself being sucked through time back to the present.
But it wasn’t until I became a mum that I felt that physical time travel was possible.
I first realised it when the wee man wouldn’t settle and, having run out of nursery rhymes, I suddenly started singing The Frog Chorus by Paul McCartney. The last time I sang that song I was five years old. As I concentrated on recalling the lyrics, I was vividly sitting on a pink carpet next to my brown Fisher Price tape recorder. I was wearing a pink and white striped cotton dress with Minnie Mouse on it and my Mum was calling up to me “not so loud Kimmy”. When the wee man stirred in my arms I nearly dropped him, I felt so completely in that moment.
It happened again when I was in a nightclub on Saturday night – one I hadn’t been to in years. I was with girlfriends I’ve known since I was at primary school and we were dancing to Superstition by Stevie Wonder. Jenny was laughing at the guy trying to dance with her, Steph was clutching two drinks and Kirstin was looking around making sure the Spanish guy she’d once met there wasn’t going to jump out at her from the shadows. I was 17 again, unmarried, without a single responsibility – my only worry whether I could drive to school in the morning without being over the limit.
The taxi ride home was like a journey through time and I headed straight up to the nursery to remind myself who I was. His sweet sleeping face grounded me like an anchor. I stared down at him and realised that every moment has been leading to this. Whenever I’m remembering, he will be the 1.21 jiggawatts I need to get home.
Sound!
Filed under education
Getting Buggyfit
They call it Buggyfit, but in my head right now it’s Buggy Boot Camp.
Borrowed from http://www.buggyfit.co.uk as I don't want you seeing me all sweaty!
I wasn’t surprised when four kids on bikes stopped and openly gaped at the fifteen mums doing press-ups by their buggies on the grass. To the non-parental eye we must be quite a sight. I took exception to their laughter, however, when we jogged over to the steepest steps in the world and started running up and down. One day they too will have excess flab round the belly button. At least we’re doing something about it.
Filed under health
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