I realised something the other day about why I have issues with cooking and why I think I suck at it: it's because I don't understand the principles behind each recipe. (People think I'm a foodie because I take so many pictures of food, and therefore assume that I can cook and cook well. Not so: I love eating food; I hate cooking, and if I had enough money, I would totally hire a personal chef.)

What do I mean by “principles”? Take quiche, for example: quiche was the first dish I ever learned how to make. People are surprised when I tell them that but that's because they think quiche is hard. I say to them, “It's not hard; I can make it!” But I can say that because I've made it so many times, I understand the principles behind quiche. Here's the recipe I use for quiche. I can't remember where I got it from, so apologies if I am violating someone's copyright:

Ham, mushroom and corn quiche

Ingredients

• ham (about 4-6 slices chopped into little bits)
• 3 mushrooms sliced
• half a cup of frozen corn
• 1 sheet of square puff pastry
• 5-6 beaten eggs (depending on the size of your quiche dish)
• about 300 ml milk (the amount of milk should match the amount of eggs)
• 3 tsp dried basil
• pepper to taste
• enough grated cheese to cover the bottom of the quiche dish

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180°C (200°C if your oven isn’t very strong).
2. Grease quiche dish with margarine/butter and line with puff pastry (make sure it's defrosted first. You can cut off the corners that stick out and use them to patch up other areas).
3. Cover the base with grated cheese.
4. Fry ham, corn and mushrooms in margarine/butter and then spread evenly on top of the cheese.
5. Combine eggs, milk, basil and pepper, and pour on top of everything else in the quiche dish.
6. Bake in oven for about 50 mins.

You can even modify the recipe to make mini quiches in muffin tins if you want:

Now, this is what I mean about the principles behind quiche: this is what you need to know about the way quiche cooks if you ever want to modify the recipe:

• Whatever you use for filling (be it ham, mushroom, corn, chicken, asparagus, sweet potato, broccoli or whatever takes your fancy) has to be cooked properly before you put the quiche in the oven.
• The main part of the quiche is the egg and milk combo.
• When the quiche is in the oven, what happens is the cheese melts and rises to the top and browns, the egg and milk mixture turn solid, and the filling is caught in that much like insects in amber.

Most recipes don't explain that. I guess someone decreed long ago they don't need to since whenever I read recipes these days, they're often stripped down to the bare essentials. But then because they don't explain why the instructions say to do this or do that, I end up stuffing it up because I don't understand, or sometimes I substitute something for something and then it all goes wrong and I don't understand why.

For example, take this Taste.com.au recipe for chicken pasta bake: step four reads:

Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat until foaming. Add flour. Cook, stirring with a wooden spoon, for 1 to 2 minutes or until mixture bubbles. Remove from heat. Stir in milk until smooth. Return to heat. Cook, stirring, for 4 to 5 minutes or until mixture boils and thickens. Stir in tasty cheese. Season with salt and pepper.

It's the part where you make the cheese sauce. When I first made this recipe, I didn't have any flour (because I don't bake). But for some reason, I had cornflour so I thought why not use that? (See, this is why I suck at cooking.) But I didn't understand why it said to melt the butter and mix it with flour before stirring in the milk: why not mix it all in together? My friends had to explain to me it was because the flour would get all clumpy in the milk, and that these instructions were standard when you were making white sauce. Well, there you go! I didn't know that. No cookbook has ever explained that to me. Where would I have even learned that? Certainly not high school Home Economics.

Even so, knowing that hasn't helped me to master pasta bake; I thought I would make one that had a tomato-based sauce and it was a total disaster.

Risotto, on the other hand, I can do—but only through the cheating method where you use a rice cooker instead of standing at the stove for hours, stirring and pouring, stirring and pouring. Somehow I understand the principles of risotto—namely:

• Whatever you want to put into the risotto—mushrooms, sweet potato, carrots, chicken, zucchini, capsicum, etc.—has to be cooked first. I would sometimes grill the capsicum, peel off the skin and then chop it up. Carrots and sweet potato I would often steam in the rice cooker. (It is rather embarrassing how long it took me to work out that root vegetables need much longer to cook than some other vegetables like mushrooms and zucchini.)
• You have to use the right kind of rice (like arborio), and the rice has to be made using some sort of stock (usually chicken).
• Once the “filling” is cooked and the rice is cooked, you combine it all together and sprinkle cheese all through it on a low heat so the cheese melts but does not burn on the bottom. For extra flavouring, add pepper, parsley, lemon juice or verjuice.

Do you understand what I mean? (*Sigh*. Maybe I need a special cookbook written just for me.)

Anyway, that revelation has helped me have more confidence in cooking, I think. Recently I decided to try a new recipe because I wanted to make shepherd's pie but realised we had no potatoes. (Potatoes are not a standard root vegetable at our house.) We did, however, have sweet potatoes, so I wondered if there happened to be a recipe for shepherd's pie with sweet potato. Turns out there is. The thing is, it had all sorts of weird ingredients in it, like hemp milk (but fortunately the recipe said you could use normal milk), artichoke hearts (which I assumed were just a kind of filling that could be substituted for something else), raw organic agave nectar (which I ignored, but then learned that it was basically to make it sweet so then the second time I made this dish I used honey instead) and fruity olive oil (didn't have any so used normal olive oil). Oh, and the first time I made the dish, I had no nutmeg so used Moroccan seasoning instead. (I'm sure if my grandmother had made this sort of food, she'd be rolling in her grave, but both my grandmothers were Chinese and pretty much just made Chinese food.) Oh, and I didn't have those sort of tomatoes so just used normal tinned ones.

Anyway, it could have been another culinary disaster, but it wasn't. I think it was because I sort of understand the principles underlying shepherd's pie though—namely:

• Anything you want to put in the filling with the mince has to be thoroughly cooked before the whole thing goes in the oven. So I steamed the carrots in the rice cooker first (or maybe I microwaved them; I forget. I've since discovered that the microwavable rice cooker steamer thing I have can do carrots in 15 minutes, whereas in the rice cooker, they normally take twice as long). And I fried zucchini, mince, peas and corn after cooking the mince and the onions. And then once everything had been cooked, I added the seasoning—the balsamic vinegar, honey, thyme, basil, parsley, cinnamon, salt and pepper (and I think I added oregano too for fun). All that lined the bottom of the baking dish.
• Then on top I spooned the mashed sweet potato. I steamed the sweet potato in the rice cooker first (it takes about 25 minutes or so, according to the steaming chart that came with it. I am thankful for the steaming chart because otherwise I would have no idea how long things take to cook. Apparently sweet potato cooks faster than carrots; who knew?) Then I mashed it with a potato masher, mixing in the sat, pepper, nutmeg, olive oil and milk.
• With ordinary shepherd's pie, you put cheese on top of the potato. I didn't do it with this recipe, but I wonder what it would have been like if I had.
• Put the whole lot in the oven for 25 minutes.

So while I certainly don't claim to be a Masterchef and even though I think I still have stacks and stacks to learn about cooking (e.g. I cannot do roasts. And I cannot make a soft-boiled egg to save my life), I feel like I'm starting to get somewhere. I still don't enjoy cooking. But I like to think that I have a bit more of an inkling about what I'm doing.

Now if I could only understand the principles behind exercise …

Money, money, money

I worry how this post will be received. I don't want to come across as being cheap for cheapness' sake. But at the same time, I don't want to come across as being greedy or covetous or overly focussed on leisure. I guess I worry that what I say will not be received the way I intend because you, my dear reader, may not share my perspective on and attitude towards money.

Ah money! That's a contentious broad topic on which I wrote half a blog post and then discarded. In terms of elementals, I pretty much agree with Tony Payne's Cash Values studies on money—that God owns all the money, but he graciously shares his wealth with us so that we may serve him with it; that things become problematic when you start worshipping money instead of God; that the Bible advocates prudence, wisdom and generosity in the way you use your money; that money is a tool by which you live (and pay your bills); and that one of the financial priorities of all Christians is to support those in gospel ministry so that they can get on with the specialised task of building God's kingdom in a more intensive manner.

However, with the third point—prudence, wisdom and generosity—I sometimes feel that I am a lot more relaxed in the way I use my money than other Christians. I recognise that in terms of material things, God has given me much. I also recognise that my family background has influenced my attitudes a great deal. When I was growing up, we never went without. One could even argue that we kids were pretty much spoiled. And yet my parents taught me to save and be (somewhat) disciplined with money. But at the same time, being cheap was never considered a virtue; if you had a problem that could be solved with money, it was never a waste to use money (if you had it, that is) to solve it. In contrast, I get the feeling that in the families of other people I know, their default position was to try to solve the problem themselves instead of throwing money at it. But in my personal opinion, one approach is not necessarily better or more godly than the other.

Generally speaking, most Christians are poor—or at least poorer than the majority of the population. It's partly to do with the way they use their money (e.g. in giving much of it away—to ministry work, to charitable work, to those in need). It's also partly to do with the fact that they serve and worship the true and living God, not material things. All of this is admirable and wonderful. However, sometimes this way of living translates into beliefs about money and the way people ought to spend their money that I think is rather ungodly—as if poverty were a virtue in and of itself. The rich are viewed with suspicion (perhaps with Proverbs and 1 Timothy 6 in mind), and anything the rich do is pounced upon and examined through this particular lens.

So I notice that often I feel like I'm being judged for what I do and the way I spend my money (not that I'm hugely public about that and not that anyone has said anything in particular). I know that you can't jump to conclusions about what someone else thinks of you and what you do; unless they reveal to you that that is what they think, you can never be sure so it's best not to assume. However, it can be hard sometimes for me to avoid thinking that someone else has formed an opinion about me and my spending habits just from comments they may utter or their facial expressions. I think that's why I am often automatically or unconsciously on the defensive when I talk about things like this—as if I have to justify everything.

Justifying a habit

I don't have to justify everything. But I wonder if it's worth trying to do so for the sake of argument. Or whatever. Basically, surrounding the topic of cheaper movie tickets is the related topics of rest, leisure, and Christians and art.

Rest

I think movie-watching partly falls under the category of rest and the theology of rest. In the Ten Commandments, we are commanded to rest because God rested on the seventh day from his work of creation (Exodus 20:8-11). It was supposed to be a day of enjoyment and fellowship—with God and with his people. The human body is frail and mortal; it can only be pushed so far before it breaks. Rest is essential not only for our physical, mental and emotional health, but also for our godliness: when we are well-rested, we are more patient, more compassionate, more forgiving, slower to anger and less irritable. In addition, resting demonstrates our trust in God—our confidence that he is in control and will carry on without us (because he doesn't need us). I keep thinking of this article which originally appeared in Christianity Today, which argued that perhaps the best way to love your neighbour was to get a good night's sleep.

“Rest”, I think, entails more than just sleep. It also encompasses exercise, leisure and, to a certain extent (because this also overlaps with work), creative pursuits.

Leisure

By “leisure”, I'm thinking of the things in life you enjoy. For me, it's reading, (some forms of) shopping, walking around looking at things, going to concerts/plays/musicals/gigs, spending time with friends and, of course, watching movies. (And TV.) I love the experience of going to the cinema—seeing something on the big screen with the surround sound, the popcorn, the trailers … really, just insert the content and themes of my five-page comic “Reel life” in this section and you get the picture. I don't expect everyone to enjoy movies as much as I do (and certainly I seem to be more in tune with what's coming out soon, what's currently shooting, what's considered “good” and what's not than most people I know). (I know I also tend to watch a lot more than most people I know.) But I don't understand people who elevate one artform over another—as if books are somehow inherently superior to the popular artforms (like pop music and television) just because they contain words.

For the time-poor (and being a parent of a young child, I am very much time-poor in the leisure department), movies are compact and easily consumable. I find that ever since Astrid was born, I have neglected reading (much as I love it) simply because reading takes up more time and requires more brain space (in that when you read, you need to keep the world of the book you are reading in your head for the next time you take it up again; it is near impossible to read a whole book in one sitting when you have kids [unless it's a picture book]). Going to the cinema also gets me out of the house for a couple of hours, giving me a fairly decent break, as well as feeding and nourishing my appetites for story, art and culture.

Christians and art

Which leads me to my next topic: Christians and art. It's a contentious one, and there are many passionate beliefs on both sides (the sides being those who have a more relaxed attitude towards the arts and those who have a more stringent view). Part of it, I think, has to do with the overlap of the ages—that we live in the world, even though we are members of God's kingdom, which hasn't quite reached its fullness and won't until Jesus returns, and so we are not of the world. Many Christians I know tend to view art with a great deal of suspicion—which makes it doubly hard, I think, to withstand the shadow of others' judgementalism if you are a Christian and an artist, for anything you do will always be critiqued and critiqued extremely closely. Furthermore, members of your audience who are Christian, if they know that you are a Christian too, will have very strong opinions about what you've created—and what you ought to have done (being a Christian artist—whatever that means in their minds)—opinions rooted in their own views on Christians and art.

For example, sometimes I get the feeling that if you are a Christian writer, you can only write about Christians. Or you can only allow your characters to commit moral actions—as if, as a Christian writer, you can never write about sin and sinners with any sort of verisimilitude. I can only imagine the sort of complaint letters Frank Peretti received because of the scene in Prophet (which really is only one extremely brief and discrete paragraph) in which his non-Christian protagonist has a one night stand with another character. I suspect that part of the outrage comes from the attitude that a Christian ought not to know so much about sin. But we live in the world (though not of the world), and as a writer and a Christian, you are always observing life around you with all its flaws, and I think if you are seeking to be faithful to God, you will do well to represent human nature in all its fallenness without whitewashing any of it—as if we mere mortals could ever aspire to the holiness and majesty of the divine.

Anyway, I digress. One thing more, then onto what this post is really about.

The artist and the critic

I enjoy watching movies as a leisure/rest thing, but at the same time, I am always critiquing and learning as I watch (as I do with all artforms—to varying degrees, of course; I feel I am not as educated when it comes to music). Movies teach me about narrative, storytelling, emotion and characters. I do not speak the language of film (and I don't think I ever will; I admire the collaboration that goes into making a movie, but I don't think I have the mentality to ever put my creative energies into producing that sort of art). But as a writer, I appreciate the writerly/narrative aspects of film that intersect with writing and the visual aspects of film that intersect with comics. (The former is more important to me, however; I'm not that visually minded.)

I tend to watch a fairly wide variety of things—documentaries, dramas, romcoms, superhero films, adaptations, animation, and so on. There are different things about each genre that interest me. For example, with adaptations, I'm fascinated by how the makers have translated a story from one medium to another, and whether they've been successful/unsuccessful (and why). With romcoms, I'm interested in the narrative and what makes it ring true emotionally (and whether they have managed to capture the true nature of love and convey that successfully to the audience). (IMHO, the best romcoms are less about the romance and more about the heroine's transformation/realisation about herself; the romance is really secondary and almost a metaphor for the internal journey of the character in a Jungian sense … I digress.)

So movies feed the creative part of me as well as functioning to refresh and rejuvenate me. I do not watch for the sake of watching; there is a point to all this consumption.

I don't know why I feel surrounded by all this judgementalism; just who is judging me? And why? Why do I need to be defensive?

Never pay full price again!

So we come to the meat of this post: how to obtain cheaper movie tickets. A standard adult ticket these days costs around AUD 18 (more if you're attending a specialty screening—3D, Gold Class, IMAX, etc.) That's pretty steep! But it doesn't have to cost that much. In fact, the cinemas and distributors make it very easy to see things for less:

• Go to a cheaper cinema: There are a few still around—for example, Randwick Ritz and Beverly Hills (though the latter is still a bit pricey).
• Go on a cheaper night: Most cinemas have cheap Tuesdays.
• Join the club: Particularly if you live in Sydney's Inner West and you see movies fairly frequently, it's worth it to join the Dendy and the Palace. For the Dendy, adult membership is $24 for two years, renewing for two years is $22, member tickets are always $12 (no matter what session, and you can buy one for a friend), you get special ticket prices to member screenings, and they send you the occasional voucher in the mail to use at the candy bar for cheaper popcorn and drinks. Oh, and if you see four movies there in a three-month period, you get your fifth ticket free. For the Palace, it's $28 for two years, they give you a complimentary ticket (well, two if you're choosing membership for two years), they send you another complimentary ticket on your birthday, they invite you to members screenings and members tickets are only $13. So even if you only go to that cinema twice a year, it's completely worth it. Event Cinemas and Hoyts don't have as good a club program, in my opinion, but they do have “movie of the week” $10 tickets for members (usually close to the end of a film's run). They do have special members screenings; it's just that they're usually for films I'm not interested in. Event Cinemas also have this points program whereby you get points for every film you see, and then when you've accumulated a certain amount, you get a free ticket.
• If you're on Twitter, you really ought to follow Hopscotch (well, if you like the films they distribute). (This is their Facebook page.) They often do giveaways as a promotional tool to drum up interest in their films—free passes, passes to preview screenings, two for one passes, and so on. Sometimes these go to the first 100 who send them their details; sometimes you have to do things like send them a photo that reminds you of Paris (for Midnight in Paris).
• Hopscotch and a few other distributors also tend to give free tickets to their industry partners to give away to their target audience. I'm on the mailing lists of a few organisations like the Australian Ballet, the Sydney Opera House, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, the Sydney Writers Festival and so on, and often at the bottom of their newsletters, they have competitions to win tickets. Again, sometimes they're for specific screenings. Sometimes they're two for one passes. Sometimes they're double passes valid for the entire run of the film. I often enter for the films I'm interested in, and it's surprised me the number of times I've been sent a pass. I've received passes for The Lives of Others, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, The Soloist, The Forbidden Kingdom, District 9—well, you get the picture: quite a wide variety of films.
• Finally, our health fund gives members discounts on movie tickets for Event Cinemas and Hoyts. At the moment, it's AUD 10.50 plus booking fee, plus they send you codes that you can use when booking tickets online. The whole system is so sophisticated now, you just need to have the barcode on your phone for them to scan; no need to print them out. I can't remember what the expiry date is on those tickets (six months? A year?), but I go often enough for it not to be a problem.

One last thing: always read the fine print. Unfortunately some passes and tickets cannot be used for certain sessions (most significantly Saturday after 5 pm, which is really the worst time to go the cinema anyway: all those people!) Check and double check before you head to the box office. And enjoy!

When we became three

When I was pregnant, my worst fear was that I'd get post-natal depression. I was a prime candidate: I'd suffered bouts of depression in the past; my husband was a fellow sufferer (and, according to one friend, the birth of the first child is usually when men who struggle with depression get it the worst); having a baby was one of the hardest, most disruptive and life-changing things ever; and if I was down and my husband was down, who would look after our child?

So throughout my pregnancy, I prepared for the worst. As well as reading Kaz Cooke's Up the Duff and What to Expect When You're Expecting, I also perused Vicki Glembocki's The Second Nine Months and Rachel Power's The Divided Heart: Art and Motherhood. As well as attending ante-natal classes, my husband and I did a church-run marriage course to work on things like communication and conflict resolution. As well as talking to friends about what the initial months were like, I arranged for my husband and I to have coffee with another couple who had experienced severe post-natal depression. As well as keeping track of OBGYN appointments and questions related to birth and labour, I blogged about how I was feeling physically and mentally. As well as purchasing maternity clothes and nursery furniture, I tried to get myself an iPhone at a friend's recommendation, because you could operate it one-handed and use its social media capabilities to get support or find company during lonely night feeds.

Nine months passed and delivery day came. After six hours of uncomplicated labour, we got to meet our little girl, and our family expanded to three. From the beginning, it wasn't as bad as I'd feared. Sure, I was sore and bleeding, and it felt like an earthquake had ripped through my body, leaving fissures and stretch marks, but according to my midwives, my post-natal recovery went like a dream. Sure, the fatigue and interrupted sleep took some getting used to, but as long as I got enough rest (albeit in two-hour doses), I functioned okay. Sure, it was all new and we were very much learning as we went, but the physical tasks of caring for a newborn weren't particularly hard to master, and I was fortunate not to have any problems breastfeeding.

Little things made the initial months easier. My church organised a meal roster for friends to cook us dinner or buy us takeaway. My mother very generously paid for a cleaner to come once a fortnight. I got our groceries home delivered so I wouldn't have to take my baby to the supermarket and then lug everything up three flights of stairs. My husband worked freelance from home, and was available to take over when I needed a break. I never felt isolated because I had social media and I joined a local mother's group. But the thing that made the biggest difference was my daughter: to my surprise, I discovered I had a fairly happy baby who fed well, slept well and only cried for good reason.

Nevertheless, further down the track when most of the attention, interest and concern had died down, I found myself struggling. Some days were relaxed; other days, I felt trapped, but couldn't pinpoint what was wrong. Some days I accepted my life and looked forward to what lay ahead; others days, all I could envisage was the never-ending treadmill of feeds and dirty nappies, and I couldn't help thinking, “What have we done???” Some days I embraced motherhood; other days, I wondered if I had done the right thing in quitting work, and felt irrationally compelled to ring my boss to beg for my job back. Some days my husband and I were united, working shoulder to shoulder as Team Awesome Parents; other days, we sniped at each other and argued about the right way to do things. Some days I found myself grieving—grieving the loss of my old life, my figure, my independence, good sleep, physical functionality (as I was still experiencing pelvic girdle pain, carried over from the pregnancy), my social life, my semi-disposable income and my wonderful job; other days, I wouldn't have it any other way. Above all, I wondered who—or what—I was now: a milk factory? A housewife? A burden on society?

Unlike some other women, motherhood did not come naturally to me. Aside from clothing, feeding, changing and bathing my baby, I did not quite know what to do with her. I was a classic introvert who was used to spending my days alone in an office, so being around someone else all the time was really confronting. I had friends with kids, but I didn't really understand the full nature of what family life was like: the mothers I knew seemed to disappear off the face of the earth after giving birth, and when they resurfaced months—or even years—later, they acted like disaster victims, still reeling in the aftermath. I'd ask how things were going, and they would reply in vague platitudes or maddeningly pithy statements that offered no insight into their experiences. No one really talks about the reality of life with kids—at least not with non-parents. Furthermore, I found my options regarding mommy-dom to be most unsatisfactory: I could either be an over-involved, over-invested helicopter parent who sacrificed herself on the altar of family, or a working woman who sacrificed family time on the altar of career.

It was then that I realised two things. Firstly, I had taken one step on the road to depression, and if I didn't do something, I'd find myself in a very dark place. The bright side (if I can put it that way!) of having previously encountered melancholia was that I knew what it looked like and could take measures to deal with it. Secondly (and this was terribly obvious), having a baby was the biggest thing that had happened to me since getting married: my husband and I had entered the so-called “third” stage of life, and the challenge now was to “embrace the daunting roles of parents and to absorb the impact of Her Majesty the Baby's dramatic entrance [while at] the same time [working] to protect [our] privacy”.¹ No wonder things were hard. No wonder everything was affected. And no wonder I felt the way I did.

So I started taking measures to do something about my mental state and to adjust to the change of becoming a mum. I gave myself permission to mourn what I had lost. I read books (Anne M Smollon's MIA Missing in Action: How Mothers Lose, Grieve and Retrieve Their Sense of Self was particularly helpful). I learned to rebuke false thinking, and stopped comparing myself to others. I tried to sidestep the politics, and taught myself to ignore unwelcome and overly prescriptive advice. I reduced my expectations of what I could achieve on any given day, and tried to become more flexible. Most of all, I made sure that every week I scheduled in time for my husband and I to enjoy our marriage, time for myself to rest and relax apart from my family (and time for my husband to do likewise), and time for me to cultivate the non-mommy parts of my life (like writing). It seems to me that being a parent is like running a marathon: you're in it for the long-haul, and you have to do things to keep your strength up so you don't pack it in halfway through.

I realise I'm still in the early days of parenthood: I don't have it all together, and I will keep learning as my little girl continues to grow, change and turn life upside down. Even now, I'm anxious about what's to come—crawling, walking, weaning, toilet training, the incessant chatter of toddlerdom, the crushing fatigue that comes with having two, starting school, teenage dramas, perhaps marriage and leaving the nest—but I know I'm getting ahead of myself. The future comes one day at a time. The important thing is to focus on (and enjoy) the now.

But even though I am a newbie mother, I want to say to other newbies that given the hard yards begin after labour, in the midst of all the nesting and baby things shopping, it's worth investing some time to make things a bit easier for yourself. My preparations did not arm me for everything; it surprised me that the mental change of motherhood was harder to deal with than the physical and the practical stuff. But I think the things I did cushioned me somewhat so that I did not experience post-natal depression as severely I could have. It's okay to feel sad—to grieve the passing of your old life and the change in your circumstances. All change is loss, and with loss comes mourning. But mourning helps you to face what's ahead, and once you've worked through it and come out the other side, you're more than ready for what's in store, and can enjoy motherhood and your baby unhindered, unruffled and undistracted.

¹ Taken from Judith Wallerstein and Sandra Blakeslee's nine psychological tasks for building a successful marriage in The Good Marriage, Warner, New York, 1995, p. 28.

And while we're on the subject of depression, let me plug my book again, which you can read in its entirety online. (It's also available to purchase in both soft and hard copy form. Um, yes, I meant to mention that on my blog sometime …)

However, around the time that one of those blocked-out weeks came up, Ben had to take on work because he had been low on work in the months previous. At first we thought we could just change the week to another week (since it's all arbitrary, really). But then Ben decided to take on other work, and recently he's been working insane hours—six days a week plus evenings too for freelance stuff. This means we've been going and going for quite a long time now—almost six months without stopping—and at the moment, I'm not getting some of my normal non-Astrid periods. I'm starting to go a little nuts. Even if you're not doing a lot together, full-time childcare really takes its toll. I'm pretty much in mommy mode (um … you know what I mean) 10-11 hours a day seven days a week (six if I can wrangle a day off with Ben's agreement). It's exhausting. (And if you think I'm a wuss, I invite you to try it while your spouse works as much as Ben has been and feels as tired as he does.)

At first, I scheduled in another week during which I thought I could have a break, even if Ben couldn't. But then I realised that I needed to be more strategic about it. Hence the idea of the “Mommy Holiday”. (NB: The “Mommy” in “Mommy Holiday” is an oblique reference to Mommy Wars by Leslie Morgan Steiner, which is about stay-at-home mums and working mums and mums who do both. I haven't read it but I intend to. Okay, the connection probably only makes sense in my head. Anyway.) The idea behind the Mommy Holiday is to find ways to rest and recharge so that I can still continue the marathon of parenting. Here are my made-up rules:

• Minimise all housework: I normally do laundry on Mondays but I did it on Saturday so that it would be dry by Sunday so that I could put it away before our cleaning lady comes on Monday. I've also swapped cooking shifts with Ben so that I have one on a day that is less inconvenient for me.
• Use disposable nappies (and swallow that eco guilt): This means washing the cloth nappies that Astrid's already used before Mommy Holiday so that they don't sit around in the bucket all week getting smelly and awful.
• Call in babysitting favours: Along with family, I have friends who have offered to babysit in the past. Before Mommy Holiday, I mapped out the week and tried to schedule in sitters for particular times and days because it's easier to say to someone, “Could you come and look after Astrid on Wednesday afternoon between 12 and 5?” instead of “When can you babysit for me?”
• Plan to do something nice every day of Mommy Holiday: This is tricky because it also has to fit in around Astrid's needs. But I think that it can be managed according to timing (e.g. if she's tired from running around, she's more likely to be content sitting in a highchair in a café while I drink chai tea). That said, there are still evenings available for things like movies and catching up with friends.
• Don't feel guilty about leaving your baby: For the first time in her young life, Astrid is clingy, and I think it's because she's around me so much more than before. Babies don't seem to have very long memories: after a couple of weeks of Ben working full-time away from home and only seeing her briefly in the mornings and evenings, she would cry when he would pick her up or hold her, which wasn't very nice for him. (It's better now though.) In addition, now she cries hysterically when I leave without her, which is just heartbreaking. But I've been told by her sitters that she usually calms down pretty quickly and is happy afterwards, which makes me wonder why she cries so much when I'm going out the door. I think she needs to learn that her universe is not going to fall apart if she's not with me. In any case, I'm sure we get sick of each other after so much time together, and it's good for her to also hang out with other people.
• Make time for all aspects of rest—that is, sleep, exercise (so this week I'm planning on trying out aqua aerobics for the first time), leisure (for me: reading, movie-watching [at home and at the cinemas; I wonder if I should do a blog post on how to get cheap/cheaper movie tickets …], catching up with friends) and creative pursuits (for me: knitting, writing, perhaps some bookbinding, etc. Oh, and I'm going to a comics masterclass). My theory is that doing so will make the Mommy Holiday feel like it's been rich and varied, given that it's only going to be for a short period of time.
• Arrange for your spouse to do things to help you: For example, Ben has agreed to do breakfast for Astrid for two mornings this week before he goes to work so that I can sleep in.
• MOST IMPORTANT: Don't feel guilty about taking rest even if your spouse is not also resting. I planned this time so I'm going to take this time. It will be good for me. I feel like if I don't do this (and if I don't do this now), I'm going to burn out and run away screaming into the sunset. Okay, perhaps that was too much hyperbole, but I think you get what I mean.

Mommy Holiday starts tomorrow. I'll let you know how it goes.

But before we get started, I think it's probably worth me saying a few things about why I'm writing these posts. I'm not sure if I have before and I can't be bothered checking (the clock is ticking and I don't have that long to squeeze some writing in before it's back to being on parental duty). Briefly, I'm writing these posts:

• as a record for me so I remember what it's like to look after a child of this age;
• as a record for Astrid who might be curious one day to know what she was like at this age;
• (most important of all) to trace the process of becoming a mother/parent in a way that (hopefully) others who are not parents will be able to understand. In a way, I'm writing these posts for past me: I would have liked to know this stuff before Astrid was born, but I know that it was probably difficult for the friends around me who were parents to articulate it. I don't claim that it will be like this for everyone, but I hope that in chronicling what it's like for me, it might be useful in some way to you. In any case, you'll get a taste of how others live, and that in turn will (I hope) promote further understanding and empathy.

So let's begin.

Playing

Developmentally, the biggest thing is that Astrid is now walking. It seemed to happen awfully quick: one moment she was working out how to pull herself up to a standing position, the next moment she was kind of shuffling along sideways while holding onto something (e.g. the front of the couch), the next moment she was taking a few faltering steps on her own out into the open, and then the next moment she was full-on walking—everywhere! She's fast too—not quite running, but almost, like she wants to (so she can get away from me!). She still falls a lot (particularly when she's tired), but that doesn't upset her too much: she just gets back up and keeps going. She's also getting better at moving to a standing position again after falling, and doesn't always need a prop to help her up.

Seeing her walk around is really funny but also cute: she tends to do it with both hands up—sometimes holding something in each hand. (My father-in-law reckons it's for balance.) She hasn't quite developed good spatial awareness yet because she steps on things, trips on things and bumps into things. I wonder when she'll become more spatially aware.

Walking means she is waaaaaaay more mobile. I think she's got a real independent streak: you can't keep her confined for long because then she will start to complain and want to be let out. This means that long stints in the pram are a thing of the past. She would prefer to get out and explore the world (and put all sorts of things in her mouth—leaves, bark, twigs, worse, etc.) We have started going to playgrounds a lot more, and even though Astrid is a little bit small for them, she enjoys them a lot. She LOVES the swing. One of the mums in my mother's group commented that I was pushing her rather high, but that's because she totally loves it! She's a bit of a daredevil, really: she'll go on the baby slide but she really really likes the BIG slide (and in one of the parks we go to, she can climb up to it by herself. She can't climb onto the slide itself, so I have to help her with that part [and I always make her go down feet first on her tummy because she's not quite ready for feet first on her bottom], but I'm sure she can't wait for the day when she doesn't need me). She likes walking around the park too, but strangely she tends to stick to paths (I think it's because they're level, whereas the grass is a little trickier for small feet.)

Astrid walking has also given me a taste of something that I think will happen throughout my entire life as a parent: the experience of your child leaving you. I guess it started at birth when she left my womb, and then as she has developed and grown in her physical abilities, it's just increased. I realise that it will happen more as she grows up, forms her own friends and interests, starts exploring more than just the physical world out there, and so on until the day she moves out of home/gets married or whatever. I realise that this is a natural thing too—that it's part of the process of parenthood that you gradually let go and allow your child to be independent and free, while at the same time worrying about what will happen to them. I guess I mention it now because I find it interesting, and it reminds me of something that Neil Gaiman said about writing The Graveyard Book (I forget where)—which is that he started writing the story years ago when he son was a little boy, running his bike around the graveyard near their place because there was nowhere else to play, but he abandoned the story because he couldn't quite get it right, and now, having written the book, he said he felt like he needed to have that experience of being a parent and having his children grow up and leave home in order to complete the story. I predict I will think about the ending to The Graveyard Book a lot as Astrid grows up.

Watching Astrid play is rather interesting: it's not so much “playing”, but walking around, holding things, picking up things, dropping things, knocking things together, knocking things over, rattling things, banging on things and taking things apart. She's not at the stage yet where she'll take an object (say a toy car) and make it do things (e.g. drive it along with her hand while saying, “Vroom vroom!”). I wonder when that happens.

She also likes rough play, and laughs like crazy when we do it. In keeping with her daredevil streak, she loves stuff like being held upside down, being dipped, being held by her ankles down my back, being held by her hands while I swing her or spin her in circles. This isn't great for my back (she now weighs around 10kg) but it's a good way to keep her amused.

We find now that she's more of a toddler (toddling around), we now need to be more firm about discipline and dealing with tantrums. Even though she can't talk, we can see that she knows when we say not to do things (e.g. don't hit the television). But she will go and do them anyway while looking at us for confirmation that she should not. Sometimes she will do that multiple times, and each time we will have to say to her, “No, Astrid, please don't do that.” I know this is all normal; I just find it interesting that we have never had to teach her any of this: she just does it naturally. In a similar vein, when Astrid is around other kids, she has to continually be taught to share, to be gentle with others and to not grab things out of other kids' hands. (One mum commented to me the other day that it doesn't matter what it is: if someone else has it, the child wants it.) I think sometimes that surely this is empirical evidence for the doctrine of total depravity. (I'm sure others will disagree.)

Even though Astrid is now having more interaction with other kids, she usually ignores them (aside from trying to take what they are holding). She will often watch older kids intently—as if she is trying to learn how to do what they are doing (running, jumping, swinging really high, etc.) But her awareness of physical contact is still pretty low: she will cry if she's hurt, but sometimes she really doesn't care if other kids hit her, push her away or pull her hair.

The changing awareness thing is quite interesting because you never know what's going to happen next. For example, this week for the first time she was upset by the noise of the vacuum cleaner whereas she never was before. (She tugged on my leg imploringly until I turned it off.) I also thought she didn't care much about her toys, but when we've had other kids over, she's really possessive of them and upset that they're playing with them. (Strangely enough, however, at her birthday party, she wasn't that upset, but that could have been because there were lots of kids playing with her toys, and those kids were a lot bigger than her.)

A note on toys: I think I understand how they tend to multiply and overrun the place. It's not just that people give you toys as gifts (or their old secondhand toys, or the secondhand toys of their friends) and you also buy toys for your kids; it's that you kind of develop toy “collections”—batches of toys for different contexts. You don't want to give a kid all these toys at once, because that would be overwhelming. You also don't want to give a kid the same toys all the time, because that would be boring. So I tend to keep certain toys in the lounge room, certain toys in her bedroom, certain (small) toys in a bag that we take places whenever we go out somewhere where I think she might get bored, toys at the grandparents' places, toys for the car, toys for her cot, etc. And then sometimes I rotate those around, depending on what they are and how much Astrid plays with them. I expect that certain toys will become more fun when she gets a bit older: at the moment, for example, stuffed toys are boring, but cleaned out yoghurt pots with pegs to rattle in them are just fantastic. Also at the moment, she's more interested in knocking blocks down than building them up, but lately I've noticed her starting to put the blocks together. I've been told that at around 18 months, she might start interacting with her stuffed toys a lot more—lining them up and making them talk to each other or something.

Another word about toys: because of the boredom/variety factor, it really is worth not spending stacks and stacks of money on fancy toys when the baby is young. It sometimes feels like a total waste when you pay a lot for a toy, only for the kid to play with it for just five minutes before chucking it away. Secondhand is fine. Also, you don't worry about secondhand toys losing their pristine condition because they've already been knocked around a bit. I got a few from one of the Baby and Kids Markets, but I also rummaged through the massive bin of toys at the Anglicare Depot at Summer Hill and managed to get a lot of stuff—cloth books (which I think are quite good for travel toys because there is something different on each page), little rattly things, a rubber ball and a whole pile of Lamaze things. They were all in excellent condition and just required a little cleaning before I gave them to Astrid.

While we're on the subject of buying things, I should mention that Astrid is now wearing size 1. (I should also mention that in one week, she grew 5 whopping centimetres, and drove me crazy as she woke up through the night and fed like a newborn.) However, size 1 (even though it's not consistent in the kids fashion industry) doesn't always fit her well in places (e.g. her pants are sometimes too loose and too long). It can be really tempting to just buy her pretty dresses, but pretty dresses tend not to do too well when she's playing, so I try to keep her in practical clothes that are fine to get dirty. I've bought a few things, we've been given a few things and we've borrowed a few things, but I think now it's time for me to build up her wardrobe properly as she will probably be in size 1 clothes for a while.

The other thing I should talk about in this section (because I'm not sure where else to put it) is that Astrid is now talking a little. “Mama” was her first word (that is, the first word that she said that I think she meant and understood). “Dada” came second, but she tends to say “Mama” more—especially when she's upset. (And it can be really hard to hear your baby crying out, “Mama! Mama! Mama!” when you're trying to do something that's good for her but that she doesn't like.) It's interesting as well that once she started talking, my perspective on her changed: it makes no sense, but suddenly she seemed much more like a little person. Really, with all these developmental changes, she seems much more like a little person, but I couldn't tell you what I thought she was before. I can tell you that I feel like I'm getting glimpses of what Astrid will be like when she's older. I'm pretty bad at guessing people's ages because, as I said in an earlier post, to me, people are just quintessentially them, no matter what age they are, and it only becomes a “thing” when the age gap is large. I find myself thinking of Astrid in those terms too—that she is quintessentially herself, with all that that entails, and that she will always be such. (That is, unless she turns out like Ben who has an unpredictable element to him; of everyone I have ever known, Ben is the one who has changed the most throughout the years.)

She's still saying a lot of babble talk, and she hasn't really picked up any new words (though sometimes we think we hear her say a word after us—e.g. “light”). But now she is pointing a lot (protodeclarative speech, says Ben; he says it means she wants us to look at the thing she's pointing to). I can just picture her talking more in her little cute voice. People tell me that it can be hard dealing with the incessant chatter of a toddler so I wonder how I will find it.

Sleeping

Astrid's night sleeps vary. At the moment, she's pretty good at going to bed at around 7 pm every evening. If need be, she can stretch out to longer without getting too cranky. I think the controlled crying has paid off in some way, however, around the week when she turned one, she was very upset about being left to sleep, and there were a lot of dramas around bedtime the way there were several months before.

Sleeping through the night can vary: sometimes she wakes around 10 or 11 for a feed, and then again at 4 or 5; sometimes she will sleep for 11 hours straight. (Unfortunately sometimes if she does that, I don't because my body clock has been programmed to wake when she used to wake.) In the weeks around when she turned one, she was still waking a lot—3 am and so on—but then was still raring to go at 7am like before. I found that quite hard, and was very glad when that growth spurt/wonder week passed. I've since become quite sceptical of people who say you can train your baby to sleep more or sleep according to a schedule: I really think it depends on your baby. Sleeping through has nothing to do with the amount of solid food Astrid is getting because she gets heaps (more on that later), and it has nothing to do with ability because she's demonstrated that she can do it (11-hour sleeps! She doesn't do them all the time, but she can certainly do them). I have come to accept it as normal that she will wake in the night, and I consider myself lucky when she does not.

That said, I think perhaps that putting Astrid to bed at a certain time does result in a certain waking time—in that if we put her to bed at 6 pm, she'd wake at 6 am. So now we put her to bed at 7 pm. (NB: This does not work if we put her to bed at 8 pm; she does not then wake at 8 am!) So in the morning, she normally wakes around 7 am (though for a couple of days or so, she was waking at 6 am, which was quite hard on me. I realise that's not as bad as some babies, who wake their parents at 4 or 5 am; to each their own). I get up most of the time to give her a milk feed and then a solid breakfast, but I have negotiated with Ben to have a regular morning when I get to sleep in (by which I mean sleep until 8 am). Sometimes, however, if it's been a particularly bad night, I ask him to get up and do the morning stuff so I can sleep a bit longer. Just knowing I have at least one morning when I do not have to be up makes things a little easier.

Astrid is usually up for about four hours before she starts getting sleepy again. For a while, she was having two daytime naps that lasted anywhere from 40 minutes (and there's not a lot you can do in 40 minutes, so it's basically not really worth the relief time) to (once) 3 hours. I wasn't very diligent at putting her down for the second daytime nap because it occurred so late in the afternoon (and I get the sense that Astrid is an unusual baby because most other babies I know seem to wake at 6 am). But now she's pretty much down to one sleep, which she takes at around 11am for about two hours or so. Meals are still three hours apart (so when she was having two naps a day, I had to make sure she had morning tea beforehand, even though those times lined up somewhat—i.e.

I discovered that if she did have a long middle-of-the-day nap, she was unlikely to go down for a second daytime nap, even if she was quite sleepy. (She would just stand in her cot and cry if I tried to put her down.) So now she's pretty much down to one sleep at day, and I try to make sure she gets it because not only is it a good break for me, it's very good for her so that she's not as cranky for the rest of the day. That said, sometimes she will take a second nap—for example, if we're driving for a while in the car.

Eating

Developmentally, eating is one of the areas where she's not as advanced. I feel somewhat responsible (though Georgina keeps telling me I shouldn't because I've never done this before and barely know what I'm doing, and it's not like she's starving or looks malnourished). It's true; I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to teaching babies to eat. I think for a long time I was still coming to terms with the fact that you do have to teach babies to eat. You'd think it would be natural and instinctual—like sleeping. But no: like sleeping, babies need to be trained. I think perhaps if I had understood that earlier—and if I had understood the steps you take to train your baby to eat food with textures (i.e. purée to fork mash to soft lumps to finger food), then we might not have had to undergo all the dramas that we did.

Furthermore, I also had to step back and say to myself, “It's okay if Astrid isn't good at eating. She can't be good at everything. What are you, a Tiger Mom?” Some babies are not so good at sleeping (and some babies won't sleep in the car or in their pram), whereas Astrid will. Some babies Astrid's age aren't walking yet, whereas Astrid is out conquering the terrain. Some babies were eating what their parents eat at 10 months; Astrid did not. That's okay.

However, I do worry that my hang-ups—or rather my indifference to food (in that I do enjoy eating it, I loathe cooking it, and if I was rich enough, I'd hire us a chef, and sometimes I think that if Willy Wonka's gum that tastes and nourishes like a three-course dinner ever became a reality, I would just have that sometimes because often I simply could not be bothered)—sorry, my indifference to food has passed onto her. I have to keep saying to myself what the baby books say: “Food is fun! Food is fun!” instead of “Food is so boring!” I am often lazy about food (and it makes me happy that Ben is now in charge of the cooking), but when it comes to feeding my child, I can't be lazy.

At the moment, we're still doing what I outlined in my last post, with a few modifications: basically I make some sort of meal, blend half of it and then mix it with half unblended, and then feed it to her. But I realised I couldn't keep doing that forever and that Astrid needs to develop the skills to eat food so that she can one day eat with us. So now we're transitioning to a new way of doing food whereby hopefully we can cook something for ourselves for dinner and then give Astrid a modified version of that to eat (as opposed to me making a lot of stuff to freeze). Unfortunately this means that I will have to resume cooking duties at least some of the time, but Ben is confident that we won't have to cook every night—at least not for now. (When Astrid is older and is consuming more food, we probably will.) At the moment, I'm trying to encourage her to eat more finger food, so she's having bolognaise sauce (with about a third of it blended) on macaroni with steamed vegies cut up into small pieces on the side. At first when I started feeding her that, she cried and had tantrums in her high chair, sticking her fingers in her mouth like her teeth hurt (and perhaps they did because she was teething a bit too, but then it might also have been her jaw because I think perhaps babies need to develop their jaw muscles through chewing). But after persisting with it for a number of days, she's now starting to get the hang of it, and with some encouragement, she will pick up her food with her fingers and feed herself.

I also think she's enjoying that more as well because it means she has more control. (This fascinating article on the importance of siblings and the effects of birth order had this interesting throwaway line: “Parents shouldn’t just roll their eyes, even though conflicts over sharing are so common, because property for a small child is a critical way of establishing authority and control over a world in which they have virtually no power.”)

On the recommendation of another mum, I bought this cookbook off the internet. (Protip: Whenever you buy books online, go to Booko, type in the title or ISBN [International Standard Book Number] and it will tell you who sells it the cheapest.) It amuses me that it has these gorgeous pictures of puréed food in beautiful bowls on lovely table settings of pristine folded napkins and cute little spoons; I think perhaps it should also contain “after” shots of when the baby has smeared half of it all over herself and the other half all over the highchair. I guess that wouldn't sell many cookbooks though!

The other good thing about the book is that it contains meals that are suitable for adults that can be modified for babies and toddlers, and it shows you pictures of the larger meal and then the portion that you take out for your child. As well as a short section on purées, it also has sections on sandwiches, smoothies, yoghurts, dessert and party food. I haven't tried most of the recipes yet, but I plan to suppress my laziness with food and give them a go. (I think I will need some help, however, as I have no idea where you get polenta and what you do with it.)

At the moment, Astrid's meals work like this:

• Breakfast: Wheat cereal mixed with water or full cream milk, plus a tablespoon of apple and pear purée. (I know I need to push her a bit more on breakfast foods. More things to research sometime …)
• Morning tea: Like afternoon tea, this varies, but can consist of any or some of the following: dried fruit (raisins, apples), real fruit (pear, rockmelon; not apple because she's not too good with that), Salada crackers, Milk Arrowroot biscuits, full fat yoghurt, rice cakes with some sort of spread, bread/toast with some sort of spread, and sometimes, because it's easy, Rafferty's Garden fruit snack bars.
• Lunch: Some sort of meal with vegies—now in finger food form so she can pick it up herself. She also has some apple and pear purée.
• Afternoon tea: Same as morning tea.
• Dinner: Same as lunch, though I will often also give her yoghurt for dessert.

I am still giving Astrid milk feeds around three times a day: when she wakes, before she goes down for her daytime nap and before bed. I'm still a bit confused about weaning, but I think what I need to do is get her drinking cow's milk more and then start dropping feeds. It's only recently that I've started giving her more full cream cow's milk with meals (because she is more interested in drinking it, whereas before, she would kind of give up on it). In the near future, I'll drop the daytime feed and see how that goes before eventually dropping the others. I know that I don't have to wean her, but I think it would be good thing to do—if only for the sake of me gaining a bit more freedom and energy. I have mixed feelings about it though: I have lost a lot of weight through breastfeeding (and a lot of my clothes are now too big for me!), but I ate whatever I wanted, and if I wean, I'll have to stop that. (That's probably good thing …)

One last thing in this section: because mealtimes were becoming a real battleground, I thought perhaps baby sign language might help. I sourced the wisdom of my Facebook Parentals group and they pointed me in the direction of Australian Baby Hands and the Auslan Signbank Dictionary. Basically you adopt around four or five signs that you want to start off with (in our case, “eat”, “drink”, “more” and “finished”) and start using them with your child consistently. Once you know them, it's pretty easy to do that because the opportunities to use them come up pretty regularly (e.g. at mealtimes). Apparently it's never too early to start, but it may take a long while for the baby to sign back to you. Astrid is still not signing back to me after several months, but I think the sign language helps her understand me and what I want from her a bit better. Interestingly, one of the parents who is a speech therapist says it doesn't matter what sign you use for the word. You as a family can even make up your own signs for things.

Oh: thought of one more thing! It's pretty small so it doesn't warrant its own section. I've noticed that Astrid will tend to do a poo around the same time of day everyday, and that they often coincide with mealtimes—i.e. after breakfast, after lunch and after dinner. It's funny to think that it's that predictable, but there you go. (I have no idea if that helps with toilet training. I guess I'll find out.)

The first birthday party

I figured it was worth mentioning here because it seems to me that the first birthday party is a bit of a rite of passage for the parents. According to the wisdom of my Facebook Parentals group, first birthday parties are really for the parents more than the baby, and they are a celebration of the fact that the parents have survived their first year as parents. All birthday parties afterwards are more for the child; my minister says that even the second birthday party is different because by then, they have started developing their own friendships.

So we invited whoever we wanted to Astrid's party. I think it must have been strange for our single and married-but-childless friends (certainly I've found it a bit strange when I've been invited to first birthday parties in the past), and perhaps we should have been clearer about the purpose of it (apart from subtitling the party with “YAY!!! Ben and Karen survived their first year as parents!”). But anyway, we did get a good turnout. We were going to have it in the park near our place, but then in the week leading up to it, my iPhone weather program said there was a 50 per cent chance of rain, so I changed the venue to our flat. We were a little worried about how we would fit that many people in (we expected around 35 over the course of the day), but I figured people would just cope (which they did). We also asked people to bring portable chairs to help with the seating, which worked pretty well.

Despite being advised to keep the party short and within Astrid's waking hours, we decided to hold it for five hours between 11 am and 4 pm because we wanted to see our friends. We told them to come whenever they wanted and leave whenever they wanted. In hindsight, I should probably have said that formal proceedings (i.e. cake) would kick off at a certain time. Oh well.

We took care of most of the catering ourselves, and as usual, I ended up buying too much food. The night before, I did a lot of stuff, but I also did the bulk of the food preparation on the day, so I was a bit stressed. Nevertheless it came together better than I hoped. So we had:

• Sausages (gluten free from Woolworths; two different types): we cooked these in our kitchen grill in batches, and I forgot to put out the tomato and BBQ sauce to go with them;
• Quiche (I made two; one was vegetarian);
• Three types of salads: green, pasta and Changs oriental fried noodle salad, which I think of Haoran's salad because I first had it at his place;
• Bread rolls;
• Various nibblies (carrot sticks, celery sticks and dip; chips; fairy bread, which the lovely Bec made up for me);
• Cake (of course!): it was coconut cake, which is Ben's favourite, from Sideways. Perhaps we shouldn't have gotten so much because we had stacks left over, but my goodness it was yummy! This was the small portion we decorated for Astrid (there was another bigger plate of the stuff for everyone else):
  
  Ben bought the farm animals and the letters to put on it. The letters are now on her door, and the farm animals we have saved for when she's a bit older and less likely to chew on them.

I asked the grandparents to keep on eye on Astrid so that I didn't have to do that and look after party things. One set of grandparents also brought ice for us. People came by all afternoon—them and their kids (who played with all the toys)—which was just lovely, and I loved how relaxed it was. Astrid also coped quite well—even with the fact that all these strange children were playing with her toys. However, she didn't get a full sleep in the middle of the day, then got really cranky and had to be put down for a second nap in the afternoon.

The party finished up around 4 pm, and clean-up was pretty straightforward, though in hindsight, I should have commandeered some people to help as I was completely wrecked by the end of the day.

We kept Astrid's party simple, but there are people out there who can go completely over the top when it comes to children's birthday parties. (See the posts on Babyology; I particularly like the look of this under the sea party, this vintage high tea party and this aeroplane party, but I don't think I could ever put in that much effort myself. Also, this post on “Are our children’s parties out of control?” gives you a taste of how over-the-top parties can be.) I didn't have a theme. I sent out an electronic invitation that didn't require much design work. I strung up some pretty lights and put the Blurb book of Astrid photos I had made last year on display. But that was about it.

With Astrid herself, in the week leading up to the party, I took her for her first haircut. (I got a friend to do it. Astrid seemed to be coping okay at first, but then burst into tears and was inconsolable, despite the fact that she had watched her daddy having his haircut just before. I think she was just tired. So my friend had to finish very quickly. It's interesting that Astrid's like that with a lot of things: we think she's fine with it, but then she has a delayed reaction and freaks out.) She has a fringe now, so it's nice not having to clip back her hair so it doesn't get in her food while she's eating. I also put her in a nice dress for the day. But that was it.

Motherhood

We're on the home stretch now. I wanted to finish the way I always do—with a few reflections on motherhood and what it's like to be a parent.

Coping with the everyday

I don't want to sound uniformly negative about motherhood. I do enjoy being a mother, and there are times when I need to remind myself to step back and savour the experience. I worry that these posts come across as being rather negative because I am charting all the adjustments and changes that happen with parenthood. So please don't think that.

I did say in my last post that motherhood is physically hard-going. I forgot to mention that motherhood is also very physically affectionate. Astrid is not an affectionate or clingy child (though she has been a bit clingier recently), but every day I spend a good portion of my day hugging her, kissing her, carrying her and so on. I think I have more physical contact with her than with Ben. (That's normal, so I have been told. Some mothers feel like they get their need for physical contact met by their child, they don't need it as much from their spouse.) So that's quite nice.

People also told me that it gets easier. I wondered what they meant, but I think it's because you understand your child better, you have had more practice at doing stuff, and things stabilise a bit more (as much as they can ever!) The changes from 1 to 2 years old are nowhere near as dramatic as from 0 to 1. I do think I'm getting better at this whole motherhood thing: I do have a sense of what's going on instead of just losing the plot and feeling helpless. I find that, for me, it helps to face the day with a plan. (I don't know if that's just because I'm organisationally minded.) Even if it's a simple plan (e.g. walk to the shops), it makes the day go better, otherwise everything falls to pieces. Writing it out also helps (so I put it into my Evernote daily list). I usually try to have something for the morning and something for the afternoon. So a typical day might go like this:

Then the following day, it starts all over again.

Week-to-week, it's pretty much the same:

• Monday: Music time in the morning at church; housework in the afternoon (always laundry, but every other week, I vacuum the floors, and mop the kitchen and bathroom floors. Our cleaning lady does the rest on alternate weeks).
• Tuesday: Mother's group in the morning. There aren't many of us who come anymore because a lot of mums have gone back to work, but there are still a few. In any case, I take Astrid to the playground so that she can run around for a bit. In the afternoon, I usually have a stint of writing time—often with Guan, but sometimes he can't make it, so I've taken to going to a local library. (I found a good one with a lovely study room that has powerpoints and nice lamps. I just wish the desks were a little lower as it's not hugely ergonomically friendly for my size, but you can't have it all …)
• Wednesday: In the morning, we either go to the shops (sometimes walking, sometimes driving) or the playground. In the afternoon, we have Bible study with four other mums at Sarah's place.
• Thursday: I still try to plan something nice on this day. Now that Astrid's a lot more mobile, certain things I used to do (e.g. go to the movies) are out of the question. So I try to take her to playgrounds, parks, new places, or we go visiting. I've noticed that it feels easier if we're with, say, one another mum and her baby, than if it's just her and me. I think that as a general rule, if the adult to baby ratio is greater than 1:1, it's always easier because somehow the childcare gets spread around a little without anyone in particular being specifically in charge of it. I think that solo childcare is quite unnatural, and it's rather sad that that's the state for many modern women, whereas in the past, there would have been more adults around and childcare would have been more of a shared endeavour from day to day.
• Friday: The mornings vary but in the afternoon, I take Astrid to my mum's place and go write there for a couple of hours. We often stay until after Astrid's dinner, and then I take her home. Sometimes Ben and I have marriage time; sometimes Ben goes out and I have a relaxing evening by myself (good for introverts!)
• Saturday: We try to do stuff as a family, but sometimes we also have stuff on. Sometimes also Ben and I take turns at giving each other a bit of alone time, with the other one spending one-on-one time with Astrid.
• Sunday: Again, sometimes we have stuff on, or we give each other a bit of alone time. Often I have church things on in the afternoon, like women's craft catch-up, a related meeting or band practice. Then church is on in the evening.

I should note that sometimes I do go out on weeknights—like to the movies. (I usually co-opt a friend into coming with me, but I don't mind going to stuff by myself.) I'm very grateful for my single and married-with-no-children friends because they are usually very flexible and can fit around my schedule to do stuff with me. That said, I am also grateful for my friends who are mums: I've found that visiting other mums is a great thing to do during the week, and not only does it give us something to do and provide Astrid with some social time with other kids, it's good for me because I learn from them and can also listen to them and support them.

The relentlessness of it all can be overwhelming sometimes though. I feel like I cope with the ongoing sleep deprivation with varying success, depending on what's going on at the time. Parenthood really is like running a marathon, and I really notice when it's been a long time since I've had a break. But there are no weekends (as in rest) in parenthood: any rest you get has to be carved out. It's kind of sad, but I've found that unless I schedule stuff in and ask for non-baby time, it doesn't happen. But if doesn't happen, I start going a bit bananas: I get depressed and don't cope.

The future

I often feel like I'm just in maintenance mode—just keeping things going from day to day, week to week. It's hard to do much more than this (and indeed, I've found that working on Kinds of Blue stuff has taken a lot of extra effort). So it makes me wonder how other parents cope—especially when it gets harder (e.g. when you have another rugrat to look after). I've been talking to mums who have two or more and from what they've told me, you just end up not doing as much. I asked one how she manages the mental space that two takes up, and how she is able to remember things like feeds and nappy changes, and she said that the kids often get changed at the same time, or she kind of watches them to know whether it's time to feed, time to sleep, etc. Some put their older children in childcare or preschool a day or two a week, which eases the pressure that having two brings. I guess you kind of surrender control and let life take you without getting overwhelmed. And I guess you just adapt and do what needs to be done—whether you're the mother of toddlers, preschoolers, primary schoolers or high schoolers. Good thing the future only comes one day at a time. I must remember that when the thought exhausts me.

Now that Astrid has turned one, I am nervous about what comes next—mostly because I feel like I know nothing. Another mum pointed out that I knew nothing before, but that's not strictly true: you get a sense of developmental milestones and the like from baby books, and when you start out, there are classes to teach stuff like how to breastfeed, how to change nappies, how to transition your child onto solid food, and so on. Now there are no classes, and the books are of limited value because every child is different. It makes me wish that there were classes—that it would be considered normal (as one speaker put it, except I can't remember who said it or where) to attend parenting classes at each stage of a child's development—less for “this is how you should do things” and more for “here are some ideas for how to handle the things you're facing”. I guess maybe I should go back and take another look at the Raising Children Network DVD. And I should keep talking to other parents. But also I know that this fear is part of the control freak in me. I need to keep on trusting God and trying to do my best by Astrid instead of trying to divine the future.

The other thing that makes me anxious about the future is the prospect of returning back to work. I think if I went back, I'd definitely just do part-time to start with. I worry about childcare and what that will be like for Astrid. (I cried a bit during the final scene of The Help when the nanny had to say goodbye to the toddler, and though my first thought was, “I've become so mushy since becoming a mum”, my second was, “How could I leave Astrid with someone else?”, which is a bit of a ludicrous thought since I leave her with grandparents and occasionally friends all the time. But that's never for longer than a couple of hours.) I worry about whether I will be able to cope with work on top of motherhood and looking after a household. I worry that I won't have time for rest or creative endeavours. I worry that I will run out of the mental capacity to hold it all together (already I am forgetting things not long after I think them; writing this post was a bit an effort and was only possible after collating copious notes!) One day soon I should probably read Mommy Wars and see what it's like for other women.

Marriage

I think one of the biggest things that we were unprepared for was the impact of the baby upon our marriage. I don't want to go into too much detail about it, but I will say that I think one of the problems was that looking after Astrid is very emotionally draining for me—especially as I'm an introvert. I would get to the end of the day and feel like I had nothing left to give Ben. Ben and I dealt with it by going back to marriage counselling (and just so you know, if you're ever looking for someone, Relationships Australia do marriage counselling and they charge you according to your household income. However, they are not a Christian organisation and I think the majority of their counsellors are not Christian, so bear that in mind if you are specifically after a Christian counsellor). Counselling had some value, and certainly things have been better since we started. (We are no longer going at the moment.) However, what frustrated me was that there wasn't much out there on the subject of what happens to your marriage when you start having kids. It's a big thing (remember that it's the third task in The Good Marriage), but hardly anyone talks about it, and everyone is very closed-mouthed about their own experiences. But everyone goes through that adjustment.

I asked my Facebook Parentals group about it, and I did get a few private responses (I guess it's hard to talk about because it involves your spouse). But interestingly, the most helpful thing I've found on the subject so far has been this book called Babyproofing Your Marriage by Stacie Cockrell, Cathy O'Neill and Julia Stone. One mum in the Parentals group said she found the book really negative and unhelpful, but did say that she had read it before kids. I'm only part-way through it and I think I can understand why she felt that way about it, but for me, my first reaction was, “Yay! We're not the only couple experiencing this!” I don't agree with all the solutions the book offers, but what I like about it is it explains the different issues from both the husband's and the wife's point of view. Plus you get a little glimpse into other people's marriages and how they operate. Also, it's quite funny to read in places (though Christian readers should be warned that it's coming from a non-Christian worldview, so there will be things you will probably find distasteful). In particular, the chapter on scorekeeping was just excellent.

Nurturing the self

I wonder if I harp on about this too much, but I think it's because it's my way of coping. Sometimes I think I am too soft because other mums have it much harder than I do (they have more children, they have less support, they have less family around to lend a hand, their husbands work long hours full-time). But I think such comparisons are like comparing apples and oranges: everyone is different. For me, I know how I'm wired and how I can keep myself going, so it's probably good that I keep thinking about this topic and how it relates to my situation.

It's hard not to think of mothering as a “job” (a job with no weekends, no health benefits, no holidays and no sick leave). I've already talked a bit about what I do to stop myself from going crazy (have a plan for the day in place, schedule in rest time and alone time, do pleasant event scheduling [e.g. arranging to go to the movies with a friend], try and make sure I actually rest when Astrid is asleep during the day, and when she's gone to bed in the evening). I feel like I'm still coming to terms with what I can now do, as opposed to what I used to be able to do. So now I'm only just keeping on top of my email, I barely check my RSS feeds, I favourite things in Twitter but often don't get time to read them (I stay on top of my Twitter feed but only just; I culled the number of people I follow from 500 to around 150, and I only really check it twice a day—and more because I enjoy reading it than because I feel like I have to keep up), I hardly read anymore, but I know that's because I prioritise television watching and knitting instead (because I can do both at once, whereas it's very hard to knit and read at the same time). Part of me is a bit sad I can't do it all anymore, but that's something I just have to accept.

So that's nurturing myself rest-wise. But I've also discovered it's important to continue nurturing myself creatively—not just for enjoyment and leisure purposes but also in terms of professional development (I mean as a writer). So when I'm consuming media (be it television, movies, books, TED talks, articles and the like), it's not just to be entertained, to be informed or to learn, but it's also to glean what I can about writing and storytelling. In an ideal world, I'd love to be able to earn a living through writing, but in order to get there, I have to produce and work hard. That means continuing to learn about the craft and continuing to practise the craft. At the moment, all the grandparents are travelling overseas and I am not getting the two scheduled writing periods I normally do. Strangely enough, I'm really feeling it—not to the point where, like Rachel Power in The Divided Heart, I feel like I'm going to explode with words, but something similar. I am trying to keep a writing project on the go at all times. At the moment, I'm working on a short story. I know that I don't get a heap done from week to week, but I do feel like I move forward in small increments (as Mark McGuinness says in his post on creativity when you have kids). Hopefully if I keep at it, I'll one day be able to make my dream come true.

In terms of nurturing myself spiritually, I find I have to make sure it doesn't drop off the agenda in the midst of everything else. For a while, Bible reading and prayer wasn't quite happening. Now it sort of happens: I listen to the Bible on MP3 over lunch, I pray bit prayers throughout the day (e.g. when I have a shower in the morning and when I put Astrid to bed at night), and I pray for people when I think of them. It's less regulated and organised than before when I operated on the six-card system, and I don't like that it's not very thorough. But hey, frequency rather than quality at the moment, and then maybe later in life, things will improve. At the moment, I think I am doing well to even fit it in.

Of course, there is also church. I've made it pretty much every week since about eight or 12 weeks after Astrid was born, apart from the weeks when I've been sick. Every time I make it, I thank God and consider it a minor miracle, considering what's involved to get there with Astrid. Every time I go, I get something out of it. I've started doing band, which makes things a little tricky with Astrid, but so far it's working. I've also volunteered to help organise women's ministry things, and I'm helping out at Music Time (doing setup).

There is also my mums Bible study group. We were slowly working through Psalms 1-20, using the Bible brief for those studies. But now we are doing Luke and using the Swedish Method. Bible study with the chaos of babies, toddlers and other distractions can be tricky, but keeping it short and simple seems to work, and amazingly we always learn something encouraging during each study. I've really enjoyed the time we've spent together. I know it's going to change a lot as a few of us are moving away later in the year, and it may dissolve altogether, but I'm thankful for the time we've had and the way it has kept me on track spiritually.

Right. That's enough. Let's finish with an obligatory cute picture of my darling little girl. This was taken the day of her first birthday (pre-haircut):

I tend to make notes on these posts in Evernote, and then when I think I've accumulated enough, I start writing them. Even so, I fear this will be a bit disjointed and rambly. Apologies in advance.

Development

Developmentally, Astrid is forging ahead with leaps and bounds (err … not literally). She finally mastered forwards crawling, and the day she did, she was so pleased with herself. (The day she did, she started sleeping through again—much to my relief!) Standing up came not long after (again, accompanied by many self-satisfied grins). Furthermore, she is able to fall over without hurting herself, and she has managed to work out how to move from sitting to standing and back again safely. Recently, she's started trying to stand unassisted, though she usually can't manage that for longer than 10 seconds.

The other significant thing is clapping, which requires a fair amount of coordination, I think. Her clapping is officially the cutest thing ever, and it cracks me up when she does it (e.g. after she's finished one side of a milk feed). Sometimes she will clap if she sees us clapping—even dropping whatever she's holding to do it. Sometimes she clap to get us to clap with her, and when we do, she is terribly pleased and laughs.

In terms of teeth, she's up to six—two bottom and four top. I have been bitten a couple of times (she's often keen to test out biting and will clench her teeth together quite intently and seriously), but with a lot of hollering on my part, she's learned not to do that any more. (Thank goodness; being bitten there is REALLY PAINFUL.)

In terms of other developmental stuff, on Kel's advice, I bought the book of The Wonder Weeks, which has been quite helpful because it's written a bit like Kaz Cooke's Up the Duff. It's based on research that scientists have done observing babies, along with diaries that the mothers keep of what their children do, and it centres around the idea that there are 10 predictable and obvious developmental leaps that all babies go through in their first couple of years of life. It seems to explain those leaps, the signs those leaps are about to happen, what's going on in your baby's brain and the things you can do to encourage your baby's development. I haven't read the whole thing, but the chapters I did read were, on the one hand, helpful (in terms of some sort of explanation of what was going on when things were driving me crazy), but also a bit unhelpful sometimes as the authors can only talk in general terms so not everything applies, and sometimes I wasn't quite sure where Astrid was up to. (Not that it matters heaps. It's just comforting to know when things get frustrating. Not that Astrid is a particularly frustrating baby; she's comparatively placid most of the time …) It's just useful to know that when Astrid isn't behaving the way she normally does (e.g. no longer sleeping through, refusing solid foods, getting upset when we change her nappy, being cranky), there's usually an explanation behind it all. That helps me to be more patient with her instead of just getting annoyed.

The other thing worth noting in this section is that we decided to get Astrid to take part in a study run by ERiC (the Emotional Resilience in Infancy and Childhood working group). One of the mothers in my Mother's group referred us to it because our babies were all hitting the nine month mark and they just happen to be running a study on nine-month-olds on the development of childhood shyness. So we drove to Sydney University and I was with Astrid in a room for about an hour—over the course of which, the researchers did various tasks with her—like recording the tracking of her eyes when pointing out the stuffed bears on opposite walls using different tones of voice; observing her reaction upon being ignored by someone walking into the room, talking on her mobile phone; seeing what she did with the mechanical dinosaur that walked across the table and roared, and whether she was scared of it (she wasn't scared of it). It was interesting for me because, I confess, I don't often get to observe her that much; during day-to-day life, there's a lot of stuff that needs to be done (feeding, changing nappies, housework, etc.) so somewhat surprisingly, it can be rare for me to actually sit with her and watch her do things. I was surprised to see how much she looks to me for guidance in certain situations—surprised because she's pretty independent. It was also interesting to see her gravitate towards certain toys in the box—probably because we don't have them at home (e.g. toy cars). Anyway, we go back when she's 18 months and they do a bunch of other stuff with her. Then we get given a DVD of the footage they recorded.

Oh! Thought of one more thing: Astrid's personality. It has been interesting seeing it develop. I love that she is very much her own person—so confident and independent. She thinks of herself as being worthy of attention and love. Nothing has spoiled that for her yet, and hopefully nothing will! (I must admit being quite envious of her self-assuredness.) She can be stubborn (for Ben and I can be quite stubborn at times), so if you try and make her eat when she doesn't want to eat, she digs in her heels and won't budge. She's curious and adventurous—she likes going exploring all over the place (and will usually get into things she's not supposed to). She loves rough play—like when I spin her around in my arms, or tip her upside down, or have her on my legs up in the air when I'm lying on my back. Gravity has little meaning for her. Maybe she'll love rollercoasters like her dad. She doesn't like being confined sometimes (so if she's in the pram for too long, she starts getting a bit narky). Also, she's funny about us showing her affection: we can try to hug and kiss her, but often she will push us away like she's too cool for such things. I do think she secretly likes it though, because if we go over the top and do it, she laughs and squeals.

Funny: she's not a heaps clingy baby. I don't know whether it's because she's a girl (I've heard that generally speaking, boys are clingier), or because she has so much self-confidence, but it's been rare for her to cling to me and follow me around; usually she's quite happy to do her own thing, and if I pick her up, she pushes on me like she wants to get away.

Sleep

Now that Astrid is crawling forwards and standing up, she's gone back to sleeping through most nights—sometimes not quite in the period of the night that I'd prefer (e.g. sometimes she sleeps 9 pm to 3 am, which is still technically “sleeping through”). But I'm thankful that in general, she only wakes once during the night, and she's quite a good sleeper so that after I've done that night feed, she usually goes right back to sleep.

I was getting a bit fed up when she wouldn't sleep during her day sleeps, and getting her to bed in the evening was becoming a bit of a trial. I knew that she was able to self-settle and fall asleep on her own, so we started implementing controlled comforting. (It's also called “controlled crying”, but I don't like to call it that, and besides, you can't really “control” a baby's crying.) Basically we do the sleep routine with her, we might sit with her for a while after lights out, then we firmly say goodnight to her and leave the room. After five minutes, if she's still crying uncontrollably, we go back in and try and soothe her, and then leave again after a couple of minutes. After 10 minutes, we do the same thing if she's still crying uncontrollably. Ditto 15 minutes. It was hard because she cried so piteously and we felt awful for doing it, but we knew that this would be good training for her so that she would learn to put herself to sleep without us (after all, we knew that she could do it; she just needed encouragement). Initially she wouldn't fall asleep until the 15-minute window, but now she's getting better and has started to fall asleep without many tears in the evening (and depending on how she is during her day sleeps, she can do it with no tears at all). I realise that not all parents would want to do this, and I'm not saying that they should, but for us, I think it was time, and it was also a case of balancing our needs against hers. Certainly it's made things a lot easier for me during the day and the night—that I can do the sleep routine and leave her to it, then go eat my dinner/have a shower/take a break, etc. without worrying about her.

Away from home, I've found that she will go to sleep in the pram with the sun shield down (that's worked in church on a number of occasions), she'll sleep in her carseat (so sometimes when she's still been asleep and I've driven somewhere, I'll drive around for a bit longer, or I'll pull over and wait in the car until she wakes up). We've also had some success in portacots as well—taking them to people's houses when we've had dinner there, and putting her to sleep in them. When we went away on holidays recently, we also borrowed a children's tent (which was a bit like a KinderKot but not). I tested it out on her for a few nights before we left, and though she found it a bit strange, she did go to sleep in it, and she managed to do so away from home too.

Food

As I said in my last post, I've started Astrid on meat and dairy—on full cream milk during the last month or so. She hasn't had any allergic reactions, but then Ben and I don't have any either. The only thing I'm worried about is wheat, which I've deliberately held back on because Ben has had a few minor problems with it and his grandmother was diagnosed with coeliac disease very late in life. But she's started having wheat cereal and it seems to be okay for her, so yay!

Her food is still quite basic and simple: steamed meat and vegies with no herbs or spices. I've started introducing lumps in her food now that she has the teeth to chew them (and she does well with them), but now I've started making “proper” meals for her—things like risotto and spaghetti bolognaise (which I then blend and freeze). She's not quite up to unblended food yet; she coped quite well with the arborio rice, but it still had to be fork mashed and mixed with pureed vegies for her to be able to eat it comfortably. I guess that makes sense; she hasn't got all her teeth yet—particularly her back ones—and that must make lots of chewing a bit hard.

Currently the meals work like this:

• Breakfast: two tablespoons of rice/wheat cereal mixed with water or full cream milk, with one tablespoon of fruit.
• Morning tea: yoghurt (full fat). If morning tea is too close to the lunch hour, I give her lunch instead, and then she has afternoon tea. Usually it's morning tea though.
• Lunch: meat with vegetables (one Wean Meister pod, which is 75ml), plus a tablespoon of fruit. Sometimes yoghurt too if I think she's extra hungry.
• Afternoon tea: (if she's up for it) yoghurt.
• Dinner: pretty much the same as lunch

I also give her liquids—water or full cream milk with just about every meal.

In addition to that, she still has breastmilk—exclusively in the very early morning (she will wake anywhere between 4 and 6 am—sometimes even 3 am), throughout the day usually about an hour after she's had solids, and just before bed, and sometimes again in the evening after she's completed a sleep cycle or two. She'll also tend to have shorter feeds during the day (1-3 minutes each side) and longer at night (anywhere from 5-20 minutes each side).

I'm still confused about the whole weaning thing but I get the sense that not all babies do it the same way, and that most will do it around 1. I get the feeling she won't take too kindly to a bottle, so I'm happy to keep going until at least she's 1, and then after that, reassess.

She doesn't always require milk, though, so there have been times when Ben has taken out for 3-4 hours in the afternoon and she's been fine without breastmilk. She's crying for it when she returns though. (This means that when she's been away with other people, she tends to cry upon returning back to me, which is a bad sad for me, but anyway …) Recently it's varied a bit: sometimes she wants more feeds throughout the day; sometimes she's happy with just one or two. It's weird how it keeps changing.

Equipment

Hmm, I don't have much to say under this category. Astrid is still wearing size 0. I made her a cardigan using this Debbie Bliss pattern but I sized it for 12-24 months. She still wears it anyways with the sleeves rolled up. I'll put up another post detailing the “making of” later.

We were also given a pair of shoes (Max & Tilly, I think), and even though she's not walking yet, I find it useful to put them on her because it prevents her from pulling off her socks, and it's also another layer of warmth for her feet in this cold weather.

I've realised that I don't need to stress too much about clothes because people have given us a bunch—both new and secondhand (e.g. from my stepsister's children). I just need to concentrate on filling the gaps (hence warm cardigans like the above; it's been really good for winter. I should make her some more).

Speaking of portacots (above), after much fuming and swearing at the thing, I've finally worked out how ours operates. It was given to us by my cousin because he and his family didn't need it anymore, and it drove me crazy because it would mostly assemble fine one day, but not the next. The rule is click the sides into place first before you push down on the base; if you push down on the base first, the sides won't click into place. There.

In terms of babyproofing, rather than buying more equipment, we've been moving some things around and using other bits of furniture to block access. We've created a safe space for her in the lounge room all the way to under the dining table—moving coffee tables out of the way, strategically placing chairs in front of power points and other things she's not allowed to touch. She can crawl around quite freely, and we know that if we have to go to the bathroom or put on the next load of laundry, we can leave her there unsupervised for a bit without her hurting herself.

Illness

These last couple of months have also marked the first instance that we've had to deal with sickness. First Ben got sick, then Astrid got sick, then I got sick. Then I got sick again (and Ben hadn't quite recovered, but I think he also got what I had the second time around). Astrid and I have had our flu shots for the season, but what we were dealing with what the common cold (which I have learned to hate). From reading Jennifer Ackerman's, Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream: A Day in the Life of Your Body, I was interested in what she had to say about colds in The New York Times. Unfortunately once you have one, there's little you can do to get rid of it; you just have to ride it out and try to avoid infecting others. Most medicines don't work on it, though you can reduce the impact of the symptoms (e.g. through antihistamines and ibuprofen). Of course, when you're breastfeeding, you have to check everything carefully before you take it because of the possible danger of passing stuff on to your baby through your milk.

The sucky thing is that when you're sick and you have a baby, you can't stop; you have to keep going. You can't sleep in bed all day—particularly if your husband isn't around to help out. Mums don't get sick leave. This means it takes longer to recover, and the ongoing fatigue that comes from parenthood doesn't help. When I caught the first cold, I got it bad—so bad that it stuck around for a full week. Perhaps I should have been more demanding in my need for help so that I could sleep (I was worried that if I slept during the day, I wouldn't sleep at night), but I noticed during the second cold I caught, there was one day when I was able to sleep for most of it because Ben took Astrid out for the afternoon to a social event, and then I recovered from that much faster. (The effects of that one weren't as bad though.)

Astrid being sick was much worse though. It was her first brush with illness, so we've been very lucky up until now. Unfortunately we had nothing on hand that would help. This meant the first night was pretty hellish. Now I understand why parents dread their offspring getting sick—particularly when they're young. Did you know, for example, that babies prefer to breathe through their noses? This means that when they can't, they tend to get upset. They also can't blow their own noses until they're around four (it's a developmental thing, apparently). So for that first night when Astrid had a cold, I made up the bed in her room so I could be on hand to help her, and she woke every single hour after just one sleep cycle because she'd try to breathe through her nose, find it was blocked, get upset and wake up. She'd do that again and again and again. I don't think I got more than four hours of sleep in total that night.

People on Facebook were very helpful with advice though, so from then on, we tried things like tilting the mattress so that the mucus would move away from her head (she did not like this because it meant she couldn't roll over); putting a saline spray up her nose to unblock it, then using the nasal aspirator on her to get the mucus out (which she totally hated; she'd scream each time we'd do it, and one of us would have to hold her down while the other—usually me—applied the spray and the aspirator, which was very difficult because she'd squirm and keep moving her head away); rubbing her chest and back with Euky Bearub just before bed (which is supposed to clear a stuff nose; I'm not sure how effective it was, really); and breastfeeding (which meant she'd get more of my antibodies that would help her little body fight the cold). She ended up recovering pretty quickly (and sleeping a bit more normally within a few days), though she was stuffed up for a bit longer than that. I envied her because I was slower to recover.

Her second bout of illness came in the last week, and it was gastro. I don't know where she got it because we had been away on holidays and, to my knowledge, hadn't been in contact with any other sick babies. Anyway, thankfully she only had a mild case of it: diarrhoea (and it must be said that baby diarrhoea is The Grossest Thing Ever, IMHO!), but no vomiting. I think I also had it a bit mildly but it didn't slow me down, whereas for her, she slept a bit more during the day, refused solids, increased the number of milk feeds she wanted and was generally a bit cranky. She seems to be just about over it now, thank goodness, but I decided to keep her home from mother's group so she didn't spread it to any other babies.

Holidays

My mother and Peter very generously paid for us all to go away for four nights, so the other week, we went up the coast to Terrigal, staying in a rental apartment. It was quite nice, but obviously it's very different going on holidays with a baby. After asking the members of my Parental Facebook group for advice, I wrote a packing list just for Astrid's things. It includes baby food (supermarket stuff as we did not intend to cook), disposable nappies and medical stuff. Then I set aside a whole day to do the packing for both her and us. We just managed to fit everything in the car. It was a little hard because the pram was taking up so much of the boot, but even though my stepsister had given us a pram that folds up into a knapsack, we figured it was good to take our normal pram because it had the bug/sun shield and rain covers, and Astrid could sleep in it if need be.

The holiday went a bit like this:

• Monday: Finished packing and left mid-morning. Arrived at Terrigal, ate a late lunch and went to pick up the keys. Went to the flat, unpacked, then fed Astrid dinner and tried to put her to bed. Ben went to get takeaway for dinner for us, but Astrid wasn't settling very well so she was up a lot later than normal. Plus she cried so hard, she vomited all over her Grobag, and of course I hadn't brought a spare. So she had to wait while I washed and dried it (fortunately the flat had a washer and dryer). When she finally went to sleep at around 10 pm, Ben and I watched a bit of TV and then finally went to bed.
• Tuesday: Thankfully we all slept for a very long time. Astrid only woke once during the night and didn't get up properly until around 8:30 or 9 am. It took a little while for us to all get ready—for Ben and I to shower and breakfast, and to feed Astrid her breakfast and get her dressed. We drove down to the headland, intending to take a walk around it, but it was too windy. So we drove to The Entrance and walked around there for a while. We were lucky the weather was so lovely: it was beautiful and sunny. Then we went to have a late lunch at a café, then drove around the lake (I fell asleep in the car), then returned to the flat for a little while to feed Astrid dinner and give her a bath. We dressed her warmly, then took her out and went to a Mexican restaurant so Ben and I could have some dinner. She coped pretty well with it (they provided her with a highchair to sit in), and we were even able to have some dessert. Then we took her home at around 7 or 7:30, put her to bed and started watching the British version of Life on Mars.
• Wednesday: I had this foolish idea that we could drive to the Hunter Valley but then realised once we got in the car, it was too far. So we went to the Australian Reptile Park. Neither of us had ever been there, despite it being around for 60 or so years. It was cold, and pretty much everything you do there is outdoors, but it wasn't too bad. And even though I'm not fond of reptiles, it was interesting seeing all the animals (which included mammals and birds too—free range emus, kangaroos, koalas, dingos, etc.) I'm not sure how much Astrid enjoyed it, but we certainly did and were glad we went. At around 4, the park was nearly empty and we decided to drive back to the flat to feed Astrid her dinner and put her to bed. Then Ben went and got us some fish and chips for dinner, and we spent the evening watching the first two episodes of the new BBC series Sherlock, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, which I thought was just brilliant and completely fell in love with. (I also fell in love with Sherlock's wardrobe; his suits and his coat are just divine.)
• Thursday: Perhaps we should have planned our daily activities a bit better. Ah well. I had this idea we should go visit Yarramalong Macadamia Nut Farm, but it was a bit further than I had thought it would be. Nevertheless, we had a lovely lunch in the café and took a nice walk among the trees. And we bought some honey and some nuts. On the way back, we stopped off at this place called Amazement, which was a small sort of children's amusement park with hedge mazes and farm animals, but it was shut. Nevertheless, they were happy for us to have a little wander in the maze. Then we drove back to Terrigal, walked around the headland, had an early dinner (Indian; very nice!), went back to the flat to bath Astrid and put her to bed, started the packing, and then watched the last episode of Sherlock before bed.
• Friday: The morning was a bit rushed, packing and getting ready to leave. We managed to do it more or less by when we had to be out of there. We dropped off the keys, then drove to Gosford, and went to the Mt Penang Gardens. It's not as big as the Hunter Valley Gardens, but it was very interesting: it had a sculpture walk in one corner, some cascading ponds, a cactii garden, rolling lawns, different levels and an architectural design that reminded me of the production design of Æon Flux (a not very good movie that is very pretty to look at). We had lunch at the café there, then drove home.

This was the first time we had ever been on holidays with a child, and it was very different. I felt like I had to be “on” almost all the time, and of course, she still occupied a fair amount of my mental space as I would be continually calculating when she needed feeding/changing/to be put to sleep, etc. It was also a bit draining because I didn't get my regular non-Astrid periods that I normally do; in hindsight, I should have probably insisted on some of that time—sent Ben off for a walk with her or something, and then I could have done the same for him, so that we could do our introvert thing and recharge. I'm beginning to think that that's the way of it—that if you're around someone all the time, it's inevitable you will get sick of each other and require breaks. Maybe it's different for extroverts …

These holidays also taught us that the importance of taking breaks from the everyday, even if you can't afford to go away anywhere. When we returned, we both sat down with the calendar and booked out two more weeks later in the year when we can do something similar—have a staycation (i.e. stay at home), but use disposable nappies and supermarket baby foods, eat out, take day trips to fun places, and almost completely neglect the housework. Being in Sydney will also mean that we can call in babysitters and take some time for ourselves. I think such breaks are good for one's sanity.

Day by day

The weekly timetable hasn't really changed much, so I won't reiterate it. I was thinking instead I'd try to outline what happens day-to-day (obviously generally speaking since every day is different):

And then the whole thing starts again.

Motherhood

As always, I have been reflecting about the whole state of motherhood. Here are a few thoughts:

• There are more things to think about and hold in my head these days, which makes it harder for me to concentrate on other things sometimes. Being responsible for another little person means I can't ever switch off. I'm basically always holding three sets of times in my head: when Astrid sleeps, when she milk feeds and has solids, and when we last changed her nappy. I do have an app that helps me track milk feeds and nappy changes, and I enter data into it for the sleeps, but even so, I have to remember these things each day because they're not consistent (i.e. it's not like I can set alarms on my iPhone for them). I also have to remember the minutiae to do with the day-to-day running of the household—a seemingly never-ending list of little tasks (take that load out of the dryer, put the next load in the washing machine, wash up, defrost Astrid's food for tomorrow, etc.) that need to be done at some stage, usually by me. Because more things (and more little things) are taking up so much mental space, I am becoming more forgetful. Now I understand why many mothers are the way they are. (And I'd also be grateful if someone could explain to me how on earth you manage all this when you have two!) I've also realised that uninterrupted time during which you can concentrate on one thing without distractions really is a luxury: if you have it, please treasure it.
• The way I think about time has changed. Things take longer simply because I have to do them for her and then for me. So whereas in the past I could leave, say, an hour (or even 45 minutes) to get up, get ready eat breakfast and leave the house, now it's more like 2-2.5 hours, otherwise I have to cut out things like having a shower, eating, etc. There are also more demands on my time, and faced with the impossibility of doing it all, I am forced to prioritise. Rest doesn't happen unless I make it happen. (Blog posts don't happen unless I make them happen!) With such limitations, suddenly it becomes clearer which things require my attention now and which things can be left until a little later. I suppose this is a skill that all parents develop and hone as the years go on.
• Motherhood is filled with lots and lots and LOTS of little tasks. If I billed my time in 15-minute increments, it might go something like this: put on a load of washing, gulp my lunch, feed the baby when she wakes, change the baby, play with the baby for a bit, put on the next load of washing and hang out the other load, do the dishes, take the baby to the shops to pick up some milk, etc. Often it's a matter of balancing housework with childcare, although the two sometimes fuse. But strangely enough there is more housework to do than before we had Astrid because, obviously, we now have another person in our house. So there is more laundry, more dishes, more food, more tidying to be done.
• Motherhood is physically very hard-going. It's not just the fatigue (and occasional headaches that come with the fatigue); it's lifting them (and they get heavier the older they get), carrying them up and down stairs, getting kicked and scratched, chasing after them when they've gotten into something they shouldn't have, playing with them, etc. I'm not sure how much fitness I'm getting out of doing stuff with Astrid. I do suffer a bit of pack pain—probably from the way I'm holding her when she's feeding. Having more than one is probably harder, I think; having coffee with a friend one day, I marvelled at her strength at being able to carry her baby on one arm while chasing after her toddler, whom she then hoisted onto her other hip and proceeded to carry back to the table.
• Motherhood is relentless. It's not like a career where you can go home and be yourself for a while; it's all the time. You can't clock out, even when you think you can. If I thought of mothering as my “work” (doing so has its own problems, but never mind those for the time being), I think I probably work longer than I did when I had a job (particularly when you include night feeds). I don't think I work harder—or rather, there are differing periods of intensity depending on my mood; the work itself is not that difficult (it just takes some adjusting to). It's just relentless.
• Related to my last point: motherhood is a marathon. No, it's more like a war. Every day you go out to the front lines and fight—fight to get it all done, get through the day, raise your child and not go insane—then you retreat to rest and refuel.
• Motherhood is decidedly unsexy. Ongoing fatigue isn't sexy. Stretch marks aren't sexy. Changing nappies isn't sexy. Disciplining your child isn't sexy. I think perhaps that's why there's this whole counterculture of yummy mummies, etc. Every now and then, I think about Lee Carter's article “The joys of drudgery” in Briefing #353 and feel like I understand so much more what she meant. Given the whole package of motherhood, I don't think anyone would choose to do this were it not for the love of children. It's unsurprising, then, that many modern women choose not to.
• Motherhood gets dumped upon a lot—in the media (the number of “bad mother” stories in the media really disturb me), by other people and so on. It contributes to this feeling of always being judged and never wanting to open up and share with anyone who might not understand. However, mothers need to know that they're doing a good job—that their work is appreciated—that they are doing something right. If you can convey that to your mum on Mother's Day (hell, on days other than Mother's Day!), I reckon that could keep her going for almost the rest of the year.
• I haven't quite worked out how to sustain yourself emotionally and mentally as a mother. It's harder to talk to people (as your attention is pretty much continuously divided when you're with your child), it's harder to concentrate and therefore it's harder to conduct deep and sustained conversation. It can also be harder to find people who can listen and understand what you're going through when you have a mother. Yes, there are other mothers, but they also experience the same problem as you in terms of distraction, fatigue, drain on emotional energy, inability to give any more, etc. So other mothers tend to understand but may not have much to give back to you (emotionally speaking). Your own parents have probably forgotten all of this and so may find it difficult to empathise. I've found that single people and marrieds without kids are the most available to me socially, but I may not always be able to talk about these things with them—simply because they're not interested (and why would they?), or because it's harder for them to understand (particularly if I am not very good at expressing myself; hence these posts: they are for historical purposes, but they are also partly therapy for me). I think that perhaps the emotional and mental sustenance comes piecemeal—for me, in catching up on Twitter (which I always enjoy) and reading about the world; in my regular weekly writing sessions; in scheduling time with friends (when I can get it); in being proactive about rest times (which I am not very good at, plus it's hard to keep it up because it requires effort and initiative), and so on. Given all that, it's easy to get to the end of the week and feel depleted. I'm learning to recognise what my emotions mean—that when I'm starting to lose patience or fantasise about being single or feel bleak about the world, what I really need is a break from childminding—to get out of the house (leaving the house is a must; if you don't leave, you don't really get a break because it all threatens to intrude and distract) and away from things for a little while. Recently I've also decided to go back to counselling for a bit (with someone I haven't seen before). I think it's probably good investment for the long-term. I also need to correct my thinking—that when my mood starts to dip, it's not because I'm being selfish or because I'm completely unsuited to motherhood; instead, it's usually because I've been going and going for so long without stopping, I'm starting to wear out.
• Related to my point about emotional sustenance is that when you're a mum with a baby, the majority of people seem to act more pleased to see the baby rather than the mother. Astrid certainly garners the lion's share of attention! That's okay with me most of the time (because I know she needs it)—okay until I am running low on emotional energy and am suffering from recognition hunger, and contemplate getting on my hands and knees and begging for someone—anyone!—to listen to me and ask me how I am for at least a little bit. I wonder, perhaps, if I am in danger of swinging in the other direction—that often when I am out with other mothers and babies, I ignore the babies in favour of the mothers. (Well, the babies probably get enough attention anyway!)
• Every now and then, I feel like I go through some sort of existential crisis concerning motherhood, work/career and my crazy desire to write. It's hard to resist the lie that I'm a waste of space because I'm not pulling in an income. At the same time, I'm sort of terrified of returning to full-time work. I haven't worked full-time since 2003, and I keep wondering if I'll be able to handle it again. (Maybe I need to take little steps leading up to it. Anyway, this is a silly question as working again is a little while off.) I think it feels so much because it's coming on top of everything else, which makes me think I can't handle it all. But I know that my brain is just thinking too far ahead; I will figure out what to do when it comes time to cross that bridge. And with the writing, I figure I'm at least taking it a little more seriously now. (The response to Kinds of Blue has been just staggering, to say the least!) Maybe one day I'll be able to support myself with writing. Maybe not. But at least I would have tried and wouldn't be living with regrets. Right?
• I'm expressing all these thoughts in these posts because it bothers me how ignorant most people are about what motherhood is like and how much life changes when you have a baby. It seems like, generally speaking, only other parents understand, and once you give birth to offspring, you're initiated into this little club and this other world (of children's marketing and stuff and etiquette and parenting techniques and so on) that you never knew existed because you didn't need to know about it. But it's there on the flipside of everything. At times, I've been staggered by the kindness and generosity of the general public (for example, the lovely mother who helped me carry the pram up the stairs at the station when the lift to the platform was out of order. Her own children in their pram looked on from the top and hopefully learned something from her example). At times I've had to curb my irritation because I've realised that the person I'm talking to really doesn't understand because they don't hang out with babies all day. I've started adopting more of an educative attitude, which I hope isn't annoying to others. It's not that I harp on about parenting and baby stuff all day, but where I can, I try to show that our particular stage of life requires particular things. For example, it can be difficult to change plans at the last minute when you have to balance a child's needs against your own; more notice is usually better. When at church, if I have the pram, I really need to sit somewhere where I can have it near me. Also, if we're going somewhere, it's good to know things like if the floor is tiled or carpeted (given that the risk of Astrid hurting herself on tiles is higher), and how long we're going to be there (in case I need to bring food). And so on.

Right. I think I've rambled on enough. Now to finish with an obligatory cute pic (taken last month):

Seriously, when she smiles and laughs, it makes it all worthwhile. Clichéd, I know.

Genesis

It was early November 2009, and a number of different threads suddenly came together and wove themselves into the fabric of an idea in my head. The first was the desire to write comics, which I've had for a very long time. (Previous attempts include “Going home” and “In his image” [which still remains unlettered—which is mostly my fault because I did have someone to help me].) The second was hanging around Twitter, following certain bigwigs in the international comics community such as C.B. Cebulski, Ron Perazza, Stephen Christy, and so on, who would occasionally tweet about making comics. The third was being immersed in the world of Phonogram and The Singles Club, which I bought issue by issue because I loved it so. Immersion brought me into virtual contact with Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie (on Twitter and Last FM) and this post on Kieron's blog—in particular, this bit:

… I did all my future-shock stuff in writing 5 page comics for people to draw. I did a load of them, because 5 pages was about as much as I could talk an artist into doing (Or rather, finishing). No matter how rubbish each was—and a lot were pretty rubbish—it was me seeing what worked and what didn't. That sort of experience is vital.

The clichéd lightbulb went on in my head. I remember going to meet Guan at Berkelouw for writing time one (Tuesday?) afternoon and saying to him, “I want to make an anthology of five-page comics all on the theme of depression”. And so The Plan to Take Over the World was born.

(NB: The name is a bit of a joke [a Pinky and the Brain sort of joke], because, obviously, writing comics and creating an anthology has nothing to do with taking over the world; I just wanted an obscure way of referring to what we were doing without anyone else knowing what was going on.)

(Also, why depression? Well, if you've been reading this blog for a while, you know. If you haven't, it's because depression and mental illness is something that Ben and I have been grappling with for a while, which meant I had a very rich pool of experience to draw from.)

Process

I somehow managed to get both Guan and Bec on board with the Plan, which says something about their belief in me and my craziness. (Bec even agreed to do all the layout work for it!) Then I brainstormed ideas, wrote scripts (ten in all), talked to all the people I knew who could draw and persuaded them to come on board too. It was hard work—firstly, trying to nail the form and convey what I wanted to my artists, and secondly, continually working with my artists to bring the project to completion through roughs, pencils, inks, colours and lettering. I got a taste for what it must be like to be a comics editor. (I once had the opportunity to converse for a bit on Twitter with Charlie Beckerman, who until recently, used to edit for Marvel—about how comics editors would oversee projects from script to print, and my admiration for them increased tenfold after that.) I realised that my time working at Matthias Media had given me the perfect skillset for this sort of work because, while working on The Briefing, I not only learned how to edit, I also learned how to manage, communicate with and follow up other creative people. I also learned stacks about collaboration (and all the way through it, I remembered the things that Toby T had talked about when he came to speak at Word by Word that time). Two of my original artists had to pull out of the project, but others graciously stepped in and lent me their talents. At times, I wondered if the whole thing would even come together. At times I wondered if I really was crazy to attempt this—especially in the midst of being pregnant and preparing for the biggest change in my life since getting married. But in October of 2010 when Astrid was around two months old, we finally finished it all.

Pitching

Then a whole different kind of hard work began: pitching it to publishers. I sent submission letters to everyone I could think of who might take it. I knew that publishing it through one of the established houses was a bit of a longshot; the Plan was an anthology and all of us were unknowns who had never been published in comics before. But you never know if you don't try. So for the next eight months, I kept sending it out. Occasionally a rejection letter would come in, which tickled me pink because it's rare for publishers to respond personally to submissions. (FYI, the norm in the industry is only to respond if they want to use your work.) In addition, those rejection letters said some very nice things about our work! But after eight months, our anthology still didn't have a home, which was pretty much what I expected.

So then we moved into the next phase of the Plan.

Self-publishing and crowd funding

I think we are very lucky to live in an age where it's become easier and easier to get your work out there if you're a creative person. Not only is the internet a cheap and extremely easy platform on which to publish stuff, numerous services now exist with the sole purpose of allowing you to make stuff. We decided fairly early on that if we couldn't get an existing publisher to take our book, we'd do it ourselves. The question was how.

Again, my previous experiences in publishing came in handy. I started sourcing printer quotes and talking to graphic designers about paper stocks, covers and finishing. (Francis L's help was invaluable in this area.) I also started thinking through the finances to work out our printing, marketing and launch expenses.

Of course, there was still the problem of how we were going to finance the Plan. Kickstarter, a crowd funding platform in the US, started becoming more and more prominent around this time. (Neil Gaiman helped increase awareness about it by getting behind “The Price”, a short film by a man named Christopher Salmon that is an adaptation of Gaiman's story of the same name.) I thought perhaps that we could finance a print run through something similar. The only problem is that Kickstarter is only available to US citizens. I thought for a while that we could use IndieGoGo, however, I was uncomfortable with the idea that perhaps we wouldn't raise the full amount we needed—in which case, if the demand wasn't there, there wasn't much point in going ahead.

Then Bec pointed me in the direction of Pozible, which is, to my knowledge, the first Australian platform for crowd funding. It works a bit like Kickstarter (i.e. nobody gets charged unless the funding goal is met—or exceeded), but it's not bound by Amazon's payment system. Furthermore, like Kickstarter, you can offer different levels of “rewards” to your donors—which basically means that we can pre-sell our book before we even go to print.

So I crunched the numbers and presented the other Plan members with a budget, applied with Pozible and put together a campaign.

And now I am ready to share the Plan with you.

Kinds of Blue

The Plan to Take Over the World is actually called Kinds of Blue. You can find it at

You can read the whole thing online. For free.

Go on.

If you like it, please consider supporting our Pozible campaign by visiting

and donating. Any amount will do, but if you'd like to pre-order the book, pledge just AUD 30 and if we meet our funding goal, we will print it and send it to you—anywhere in the world.

Also, if you like it, please spread the word. The campaign ends in 60 days and it would be just a little bit wonderful for me and the team (but mostly for me!) if we could make this happen.

Here are some in progress shots (which Bec says she likes):

Notice you knit it from the bodice down.

Here's the finished skirt plus straps:

Now assembled and blocked:

Finished dress! I love the drape.

Sorry, not Astrid pics; it's sized for an 18-month-old, which means it's way too big for her. Maybe when she grows into it …

Development

I remember people telling me that the time goes quick but I don't think I really understood what they meant. Now I do. The number of changes and amount of development that occurs in the life of a little human in the first year alone is just staggering: in that space of time, they learn to hold up their heads, roll over, sit up (and stay sitting up), crawl, stand and sometimes even walk (I've been told that boys usually learn to walk later than girls do). They also grow teeth (painful!) and learn to eat solid food. Some of them even start talking (i.e. say their first word—as opposed to baby babble) before their first birthday.

Astrid is almost eight months and already she can roll over, crawl (backwards; she's still working on forwards. Apparently they do backwards first because they have better control of their arms), sit up, pull herself into a sitting position from crawling, bear her own weight standing (if you hold her up), and eat solid food (instead of pushing it out with her tongue; a bit more about that later). She's got her two bottom teeth and the top ones are currently on their way. It's such a contrast to how she used to be. She looks very different too—so much so, I look at the photos from around when she was born and can hardly believe that she is the same person. Yet she is.

It may sound weird, but I keep not thinking of her in terms of her age but just as who she is, and so I keep forgetting she's still a baby. It's not that I'm expecting her to do advanced calculus or run a marathon; it's just a quirk of my personality—that I tend to think of people as being “them” (in terms of character, essence, or whatever you call it) instead of them as a 25-year-old, 36-year-old, 64-year-old, etc. This means that people's ages end up surprising me as I don't really think of myself in relation to them being older or younger or whatever. To me, sometimes it seems like everyone is the same age—unless there is a vast gap between me and someone else. Do you do that too?

I don't feel like I'm explaining myself properly. Blame the fatigue.

One last thing for this section: it's been nice having her alert and more aware of her surroundings and other people. She is interested in everything—in mundane stuff that we don't think twice about because we're used to it. I have to remember that everything is new to her and that she doesn't necessarily know what's going on. The Raising Children Network DVD that we were given in our parent pack by the hospital (and the Australian government)—

—said to be aware of “teachable moments”—times when we can explain to her what's going on. So the other night Ben was in the kitchen making dinner while I was feeding her her dinner, and she was getting distracted and stopped eating to watch him, so I asked him to talk to her and tell her what he was doing. Who knows how much she actually takes in, but it's good for us to remember to do that.

Sleep

I like to think that Astrid's “normal” is sleeping through, but she hasn't been doing it for the past couple of weeks because of this current growth spurt. She's a pretty good sleeper, and would regularly clock up 6-10 hours straight per night. The growth spurt means she's back to newborn waking—feeds every three to four hours. (People tell me to check whether she's actually hungry as opposed to wanting comfort, but no: she's actually hungry, and she'll feed every time.) It's driving me a bit batty. I'm trying to return to my newborn sleep habits but unfortunately she's a lot more alert and awake now than she was back then. In the first couple of months, she'd wake for a feed and a nappy change, and then be ready to go back to bed about an hour to an hour and a half after waking. Now, sometimes she will go back down at around the one and a half hour mark, but often she won't—or she's not quite there yet and needs a bit longer awake. She still sleeps in the day but her naps are usually only 40-50 minutes long (2 hours is quite unusual for her, but every now and then she will have that). This means that when she is awake proper (which can be anywhere between 6-8 am), it's harder for me to go back to bed to get that last couple of hours of sleep. Strangely enough, even though Astrid has resumed waking in the night at the moment, she is not more tired in the morning; she's still raring to go. So increasingly I've been waking Ben to take over and feed her breakfast, play with her a bit and then re-settle her back to sleep. I realise I'm really fortunate I can do that; if he didn't work from home and it was just me all day, I'd probably have to start going to bed earlier—like when she does (at around 8-9 pm instead of 10-11 pm).

40-minute daytime sleeps mean that you can't really get much done—not like when she would sleep 2 hours before the next feed. Again, I'm fortunate to have Ben at home, which means that on Mondays, he can watch her for a bit while I run around doing a bit housework. It also means that she usually gets dragged along to things I have to do/want to do, which may not be the greatest fun for her, but then life isn't all about play and fun, and as a friend pointed out, you have to consider what sort of child you want in the future—one who is patient and is able to entertain herself by herself or one who gets bored easily and is always bugging you.

Fortunately by now she knows how to re-settle herself if she wakes in the night. She's not at the stage where she can fall asleep by herself every time; sometimes she still gets quite overtired and hasn't quite clued into the fact that when you go to sleep, you have to stop rolling and trying to crawl around your cot, and instead lie still and shut your eyes. But she doesn't seem to need as much intervention from us as she used to; we used to rock her in our arms and then put her down, and then we realised that wasn't sustainable (especially as she put on weight and got heavier!), so we changed things so that we read her a story first, then put on one of the sleep playlists I've made for her (of classical music), then sit by her cot (before: bassinet), with one hand on her, either gently stroking her or rocking her back and forth, then as she keeps more and more drowsy and falls asleep, leaving a hand still on her for a bit before gradually removing it and slipping out of the room. These days, we don't have to do the last bit with the hand as much.

Food

Other parents told me that things would keep changing, but again, I had no idea what they meant. (I probably should have asked them to elaborate.) The World Health Organisation's current recommendation is to breastfeed exclusively for at least six months, but then other experts are now saying that you should start solid food with babies earlier (say at around four months) because they don't get all their iron needs from breastmilk alone. Still, for the first year at least, they seem to get most of their nutrition from breastmilk.

Your supply of breastmilk varies according to demand, so if your baby feeds less, you'll have less of it, and vice versa. However, your body (or so I've been told) also gets more efficient at processing it. (I'm not sure how this affects breast size, but certainly when you wean, you need a smaller, possibly returning to your former size.) Astrid at birth would feed for ages—20-40 minutes each side. Within a month, she was down to 10 minutes per side. Now it's something like 4-6 minutes per side, and sometimes not even that. Even so, she does longer feeds sometimes—like the last feed before bed, or in the middle of the night, or the first feed of the day—and those can be back to 10 minutes per side again.

Introducing solids marks the beginning of the weaning process. We started Astrid on them at around 5.5 months, and I basically followed the recommended feeding guide put out by Heinz (one of the parents in my Facebook group linked to it). It took a while to get going because I had to get my head around it first, plus I wasn't quite sure how to do certain things like purée fruits and vegetables and freeze them. (Thank goodness for YouTube …) I bought these freezer pods from Wean Meister, and I must say they have been wonderfully convenient. (I also like that they are versatile and can be used for other stuff beyond baby things.) I gave her rice cereal first, then introduced pear, apple, pumpkin, carrot, carrot and sweet potato, avocado and broccoli. This is cooked pear:

This is cooked puréed pear fresh from the blender into the Wean Meister pods:

This is pear mixed with rice cereal (because pear on its own is a little too tart, which isn't nice for babies):

And this is a mix of stuff ready to freeze: puréed pees, puréed broccoli and slices of avocado (because avocado freezes better when it's in slices):

At another friend's recommendation, I bought some bibs from Bumkins, and I'm very happy with them. (They're waterproof, and can be cleaned and taken places easily. Astrid isn't really a drooler [even when teething] so doesn't need to wear the terrytowelling bibs, so I find that these are the only bibs she uses.) I bought four, but think in hindsight I probably should have gotten five because, although initially I was feeding her solids at breakfast, lunch and dinner, now she's up to five meals a day (we've added morning and afternoon tea). Oh well.

She's also up to the next stage of eating, which is introducing meat and yoghurt. I've only started this in the last week or so, so it's just been chicken at the moment. (I think they say start with chicken and fish, then move onto red meat.) (Hmm, I did not take a picture of the puréed chicken …)

But for a while, she just refused solids, which was rather frustrating as I would prepare her food and then it would get thrown out. (Not eating any solids also meant that she stopped sleeping through, and resumed feeding at night.) A friend suggested that perhaps she wanted to try feeding herself, so I had to lay aside my loathing of mess and give her some control. (Already I can tell she's going to be stubborn like me and Ben.) I used to feed her in her bouncer (because she wasn't sitting up yet), but then I started her in the highchair, and moved the highchair into the kitchen to make the mess easier to clean. I also gave her her own spoon (which means that we have two spoons for each feed). She holds and controls one (and tries to put the food in her mouth [and instead gets it all over her face and sometimes her clothes, and in her hair, and I got to tell you, this is one drawback to having so much hair], or she flings it across the kitchen, or she drops the spoon on the floor), and I use the other one to put food in her mouth whenever she opens it for her spoon. I am a bit worried I'm being sneaky and that she won't trust me anymore as I'm making her do something she sort of doesn't want to (or at least in the way she doesn't want to do it), but I think she understands that she's not quite there at feeding herself, and that she needs my help to eat the stuff, otherwise we'd be there forever. So at the moment, it's working like this:

• Breakfast: breastmilk, then 3 tablespoons of rice cereal.
• Morning tea: breastmilk, then some sort of fruit and rice cereal (at the moment, it's either apple or banana, but she isn't too fond of banana).
• Lunch: breastmilk, then it used to be fruit and rice cereal, but I'm changing things so that she has a couple of different of vegies and some meat (today it was carrot, sweet potato, broccoli and chicken).
• Afternoon tea: breastmilk, then it used to be fruit and rice cereal again (but then she was eating too much rice cereal and getting constipated because of the iron), so I'm trying to get her onto yoghurt.
• Dinner: Pretty much the same as lunch.

Then she will have a top-up feed of breastmilk before bed.

I haven't been game to change things around so that she has solids first and then breastmilk. I did try once, but she protested very loudly, so I think I will wait until she's through this growth spurt and things are calmer, and then try again.

It's been interesting teaching her to eat and drink—to swallow the food instead of pushing it out with her tongue (which is called the tongue extrusion reflex, and it happens because babies use their tongues differently when taking milk from the breast) and to take the water from the sippy cup by not sucking on it (as opposed to sucking on the breast). I have to remember that teaching her about eating is a lifelong thing—that it also involves stuff about nutrition and eating healthy, having a good relationship with food (as opposed to feeling guilty about eating things, overeating, comfort eating, bulimia, anorexia, etc. This article on families struggling with an anorexic child was eye-opening), how to enjoy food, and so on.

Eating solids has also changed the nature of her poop, but the less said about that, the better, I think. I've finally moved her into the standard inserts for the Bumgenius nappies, and I've also stopped doing the nightly changes as per what the Raising Children Network DVD says to do; instead, I add the newborn insert to the standard insert (making what I jokingly call a “super nappy”), and don't change that at night unless she's done a poo (and she usually hasn't). It's full by morning but not leaking.

Starting Astrid on solids is a massive contrast to solely breastfeeding her because it means being way more organised—accommodating her dietary needs into the grocery shop, making the time to purée and freeze things, making sure that I defrost what I need for the day, packing her meals (plus spoon plus bib plus a washer to wipe down her face at the end of it all) whenever we are out for an extended period of time, and so on. With breastfeeding, you carry her food with you (well, on you) and it's always ready when you need it (instead of having to warm things up, or mix up some water and rice cereal). I look forward to the day when she can eat pretty much what we eat and things are easier (they say that happens at around 12 months).

Even though she is now on solids for five meals a day, during this growth spurt, as I said, she still wakes at night, but she also will cluster feed in the evenings—sometimes wanting breastmilk once an hour for several hours. (Yes, I'm 100 per cent sure that's what she wants; it's not comfort she's after, it's milk.) This means I haven't been able to go out in the evenings—not that I was doing much of that before, but I was starting to. It's a little depressing for me (e.g. last night I was planning to go to a craft night at a friend's house but had to pull out), but I have to bear in mind that this is just temporary and things will get easier as she becomes less reliant on me and can be left with other people. (Patience, Karen, patience …)

One positive of all this cluster feeding is that I have lost weight without doing much exercise. (Ongoing PGP issues means that I can't really do any form of strenuous exercise anyway.) Breastfeeding means that you need to consume extra calories, and I guess I'm not getting as much as I should be. But I can now fit into jeans I haven't been able to wear for years. That's rather nice!

One last thing about food: being on solids and letting her have more control over the spoon, as well as allowing her to touch and play with her food, means that she gets way dirtier these days. Oh yeah: crawling also adds to that (especially crawling outdoors!) So we're bathing her more often than we used to. Fortunately she can now sit up, which I think it a lot nicer for her. Once or twice I've even bathed her in the big bath (as opposed to the baby bath)—either getting into the tub with her or keeping a firm grip on her while leaning over the side. I now understand why many parents leave the bath until the last thing of the day: then you can clean off all the mess, food and dirt that has accumulated since breakfast, and put your child in clean clothes!

Equipment

Speaking of clothes (err, I did already, didn't I), Astrid is now into size 0. As I said in my post on fashion, I've been concentrating on getting her onesies/rompers (without feet because she has big feet and the ones that have feet are usually too small), plus warm things for winter. I'm not sure I've gotten enough but I have to remember that perhaps a good approach is to also see what she needs as she needs it. I also plan to knit her a few things but I'm in the middle of another project at the moment, so I may not get to that for a while (good thing baby clothes are relatively fast to knit!)

The costs really add up with kids and clothes, so it's nice that people gave us so many things at my baby shower, I hardly had to buy anything in the 000 and 00 sizes. I look forward to the day when ThredUp reaches Australian shores (it's like BookMooch but for children's clothes … err, that makes no sense unless you know what BookMooch is …) In the meantime, there's eBay, the Baby and Kids Market (which are held all over the place), and, of course, borrowing from other families. (So at the moment, my sister-in-law and I have swapped clothes: she's got all the warm 00 stuff that doesn't fit Astrid anymore but which will fit our niece, and she's lent us a bunch of size 0 stuff that our nephew used to wear. We'll give it back when our niece reaches that size.) I do confess to being a little fussy about things like colours, but really, there's only so much pink one can handle …

Now that Astrid's rolling, we've moved to infant sleeping bags. I can see how they make sense because it's hard to keep a wriggly baby under blankets when they're just raring to roll around the cot. My parents-in-law gave us a Grobag when Astrid was born (size for 0-6 months, 1.0 tog; the “tog” rating refers to how warm it is). Astrid will grow out of it shortly. Unfortunately in this country, Grobags are hideously expensive—about RRP $90 each. They're made in the UK, where they're cheaper, but UK distributors won't ship here. I've managed to get around the problem by buying a bunch on Amazon UK and sending them to a friend's house, and as she's coming to visit in a week or two, she's very kindly agreed to bring them over for me. I know a lot of parents buy two of each size and each tog so that they can put one in the wash if it get soiled, but I figured I could get by with one of each and a cheapo brand for wash days.

I've mentioned all the eating stuff (spoons, bowls, sippy cups, Wean Meisters), so let's move onto babyproofing. We haven't done heaps of that yet as Astrid isn't crawling heaps (only backwards crawling; once she gets going and wants to explore everywhere, I'm sure we'll have to do more). A friend said wait to see what she goes for instead of going through and doing everything, which seems like pretty sensible advice. We were given this barrier for when Astrid is ready for an adult-sized bed—

—and it's currently sitting in front of the television stuff so that Astrid doesn't fiddle with that stuff. The other major thing is a safety gate for the kitchen, which I managed to get off eBay secondhand for much cheaper than retail:

(Though I did have to get a 7cm extension for the gate, and then discovered that several years ago, Lindam had changed the side fittings of their gates, and so things got a little stressful as I had to call home, get Ben to photograph the ends and SMS me the photo so I could make sure I bought the right ones, and then I was driving home in rush hour traffic all the while conscious that Astrid was up and wanting to feed but I wasn't there … guh. Anyway, there's a lesson there: be careful with what you get on eBay because some of that secondhand stuff may not necessarily work with newer things you need to purchase.)

Pram-wise, I can't remember if I mentioned this in my last post, but at 5 months or so, we changed things around from using the carrycot so now things look like this:

(Err, that's Astrid under the sun and bug shield, which is down in that photo because of the sun.)

Mommy-dom

Further to my last post on dealing with the change to motherhood, I find that I'm still learning and adjusting. I'm learning new skills (e.g. how to make food for my baby). I'm learning what I can and can't do with Astrid in tow. I'm learning what she's capable of now at this stage of her development. I'm learning how to be both structured yet flexible (this is a massive thing for me as I tend more towards the structured rather than the flexible)—timing things around sleeps, feeds and nappy changes. For example, if she feeds at 9 am, I know that she'll want to feed next at 12 pm (i.e. lunchtime feed) and that she may want to have a nap at around 10:30 am. I've learned how to get Astrid to sleep while on the move (putting her in the pram with the sun and bug shield down [this blocks out all distractions], then moving or jiggling the pram works a treat). I'm also learning how to keep going from day to day, week to week (remember, motherhood doesn't come with many breaks). I find that if I plan to do things—even if it's simple stuff like printing some sheet music for children's songs and playing them on our keyboard while Astrid sits on my lap, or taking Astrid to a park and going for a little (very slow because of PGP) walk—it usually helps, otherwise I tend to go a little crazy on days when it's mostly her and me.

I'm also learning to be way less selfish. I became less selfish when I got married because now I was mindful of someone else (i.e. Ben) all the time. But now with Astrid, she is so dependent on me (well, us) for everything, I find I spend a good portion of my day doing things for someone other than myself—far more than I used to. Ben, at least, can make his own lunch; Astrid can't. Astrid can't even feed herself (though she tries); she needs to me to help her. That's pretty confronting. Furthermore, because everything takes twice as long (e.g. I have to feed her and then I have to feed myself; I can't really do both at the same time), that really doesn't leave that much time to myself—something I struggle with a little as an introvert. I realise that all this is good for my godliness (à la 1 Timothy 4:7-8) and that I am becoming a better person for it. It does make me wonder whether parenthood has that affect on everybody, and whether the culture is different in places that don't value traditional marriage, family and children. We are lucky in Australia that society generally is very pro-baby: when I'm out and about, it still surprises me that people smile and say hello to Astrid, and chat to me about how old she is and what she is doing. It makes living in Sydney a bit friendlier!

However, I am also aware sometimes of how life has changed—not just with the whole less socialising and going out that I mentioned in my post on motherhood and change, but also with the kind of company I find myself keeping—usually other mothers and babies. This is refreshing in one sense (because I've never hung out with mothers and babies before). But I also get a little sick of it, and long for some balance from other demographics. A couple of months back, my mother's group arranged a night out for the girls. We went to Bloodwood for dinner (which I recommend; it was delicious—even the trifle, and I don't normally like trifle). Because I was out, Ben had to be home, so he asked some people to come over. Most of them had left by the time I returned, but a few were still there—one of Ben's school friends and a friend from Wild Street. Because I don't get to hang out with guys much anymore, I was a little naughty and irresponsible, staying up very late and talking to them. (I won't say how late; the parenting police might come take me away.) I was completely wrecked the next day (well, both Ben and I were), but it was totally worth it because I had fun.

The state of modern motherhood is something I've become interested in, and I find myself gravitating towards articles of that nature in my reading around the internets (I find them through Twitter). I realise that a lot of what's out there is heavily influenced by second-wave feminism (and certainly this article in the Guardian on how modern motherhood tends to resemble 1950s housewifedom is like that). But that Guardian article was really helpful for me not just for understanding how the change to parenthood affects both husband and wife, mother and father; it also made me realise that we do, in fact, have stacks of choice. We just forget we do. It doesn't have to be mum stays home with the baby and does most of the parenting while dad goes off to work (hi ho!); there are ways for parents to share the load in this country (even if our parental leave scheme is nowhere near as wonderful as Sweden's). When Astrid is older, perhaps I will become the breadwinner while Ben stays home with her. Or perhaps we can split the load and each work part-time (with maybe one day with her in childcare/pre-school when she's 3 or 4). It may be a little harder (and perhaps we will have another little Beilz by then so the plan may be different), but we need to keep talking about it and supporting each other in what we want to do. (For example, at the moment, I want to try and concentrate on writing a bit more, which is hard at the moment, but not impossible.)

The change to parenthood is affecting our marriage a lot, but I don't want to write about that at the moment; I think that sort of topic requires more time and reflection (if I ever do blog about it here; I may not).

Week by week

So what's life like at the moment? Fairly similar to six months:

Monday

Once a fortnight, our cleaning lady comes to vacuum, clean the bathroom and the kitchen, and do a little dusting. On the alternate weeks, I vacuum and clean the kitchen and bathroom floors. I have been taking Astrid to Music Time at church, and it's been fun learning new songs and things to do with her at home, as well as meet some of the other mums (some of whom aren't Christian). Music Time is over for the term at the moment, but I plan to go as much as I can for the rest of the year.

Little Rachel hasn't been as free to meet lately, though we have gotten together a little for lunch. Otherwise, I head home for lunch and to put Astrid down for a nap. I also start the laundry (as well as tackle the housework on the weeks our cleaning lady doesn't come), sometimes asking Ben to keep an eye on Astrid as she plays.

Most of the laundry is done by the evening, depending on how much there is. Ben will make dinner (or heat leftovers), and somehow we will fit in eating around feeding Astrid her dinner and getting her ready for bed. After giving her her last feed, I'll hand things over to Ben so he can settle her to sleep, then I'll go and do the dishes. If we are fortunate, we will have a couple of hours before bed to watch a little TV, though sometimes Ben still works into the night. We try to go to bed before midnight.

Tuesday

Mother's group still meets between 12 and 2 pm. We are meeting in parks more, although the weather is sometimes bad and plans can change at the last minute. Parks are good because we can spread picnic blankets on the ground and the babies can roll around and play with all the toys each of us brings. (We're not too concerned about them chewing or drooling on each other's toys, and most of the mums are pretty good at keeping their bubs at home if they're sick.) I usually pack some lunch if we're meeting in the park, but I've found I'm the only one who does that; the other mums must either eat before or after.

After mother's group, I bring Astrid home and hand her over to Ben, then usually I drive to Newtown and meet Guan to do some writing (or working on the Plan to Take Over the World). (Bec unfortunately can't always make it.) Sometimes Guan can't make it either—in which case, I just go to our local café instead of going to Newtown. I try to be home by the next feed (which can be a little hard what with rush hour traffic and my own selfishness at wanting to write a bit more—finish this sentence, this paragraph), but hopefully it will get easier as Astrid starts taking less breastmilk and more solids.

I also try to get our groceries delivered on Tuesday afternoons because Ben will usually be home to receive them and because mornings are pretty terrible for us. So often there will be fresh food in our house by the time I get home again.

Same thing applies regarding dinner and sleep.

Wednesday

Ben sees his personal trainer in the morning and I go to a mothers' Bible study group. There's only three of us in the group and it's not a church-run thing; it sort of started because one of my friends who lives local was close to giving birth, and she asked me about Bible study and I said I didn't know what to do about it because it's hard to do evening groups with a baby, but at the same time, I have trouble attending anything that meets earlier than 10:30 am because I really need those extra couple of hours of sleep at the moment, which means the church mums' Bible study group isn't really feasible. So my friend suggested we start our own and have it meet at a later time. Another friend at church whose bub is about Astrid's age was also keen, so we've been trying to meet regularly for the past five weeks or so. There was only two of us for a few weeks as my pregnant friend finally gave birth, but now her baby is a couple of weeks old, she's keen to resume. (Amazing; I know I wasn't up for Bible study again at that stage!) There are a couple of other mums we know who are keen to come along too, but don't quite feel ready. So we will see if the group grows.

At the moment, we are working through Mike Taylor's Bible brief on Psalms 1-20 (see Briefing #372). I figured that was a good one to start with as the Psalms are usually short, the Bible brief is short and easily digestible, and we can use the questions as a launch pad for looking at the text. We don't always get to pray together because of the demands of babies, but I record the prayer points on my iPhone and email them around later so that we can keep on praying for each other throughout the week.

We return home for lunch, and the afternoon is either spent at home doing chores (folding and putting away the laundry is the main one), or sometimes I take Astrid out to run errands or visit people. Then the same thing applies for the evening, though occasionally Ben is out—either for a concert, or visiting a friend—in which case, I handle the bedtime stuff for Astrid.

Thursday

I try to do something that I find nice on this day. But it has to be something I can do with Astrid. Once I took her into the city on the train. We got off at St James, walked around Hyde Park a bit, then I spread a picnic rug on the grass and we had some lunch. Then I took her for a walk around Westfield Sydney (so she would sleep) while I poked around in the shops, I gave her a nappy change in Myer (because the parents' room for Westfield Sydney is not located in the main part of the shopping centre; it's actually tricky to find), then we had afternoon tea at The Tea Centre, before walking to Town Hall and catching the train home.

Another time I took her to Bicentennial Park in Glebe, and we walked around, then I found a shady spot on the grass to spread a picnic blanket where I fed her lunch. Then I took her to Blackwattle Café where I enjoyed a very nice (but rather pricey) lunch, and then rocked her to sleep in the pram, then I walked slowly back to the car so she could sleep a bit longer, and we drove to a friend's house so I could watch her little boy for a bit while the friend packed boxes in preparation for moving house, and then we went home for another nap when the little boy needed to go down for a sleep.

It's harder to be out and about when it's raining. Then the only options are staying home or hanging out in a shopping centre (which is convenient but boring). Rhodes is a very child-friendly shopping centre, with very well-equipped parents' rooms at both ends, IKEA and Reading Cinemas, which has a special room for parents and babies (they call them “cry rooms” the way churches do) in their two biggest cinemas, which means you can watch current movies without having to be at a mums and bubs session and without bothering other audience members. (Mind you, hardly anyone goes to the movies during the day anyway, so you could be in the theatre all by yourself anyway.)

One rainy day I decided to stay home but take it easy: I didn't do any housework, I played with Astrid when she was up, but also watched a little TV with her (I figure a little is okay), read books with her, had a bath with her (with bath toys!) and played piano with her, and that was rather nice and relaxing in its own way.

The evenings on Thursdays are much the same, although sometimes Ben might be out.

Friday

The mornings are fairly laidback or filled with housework-y type things (e.g. washing or stuffing the cloth nappies), but in the afternoon, I drive to my mum's place so Astrid can spend a bit of time with her and Peter. They look after her and I go upstairs to my mum's bedroom where she's set up a desk as her creative space (separate from her office, which is where she does all her academic work). In between feeds, I try and do a little writing (or work on the Plan to Take Over the World). My mum will settle Astrid for an afternoon nap, then I'll feed her when she wakes and we'll head home.

Sometimes Friday evening is date night; sometimes Ben is out. If it's date night, sometimes we get takeaway, or we eat out. We haven't quite worked out how to do it around Astrid's bedtime routine, so we might have to keep working on that, or I will have to start going to my mum's a bit earlier than I have been.

Saturday

We're trying to do more things as a family on Saturdays, but it's a little tricky sometimes. Also, we need to keep thinking of things to do. But sometimes Ben will give me some relief time by taking Astrid for a walk in the afternoon, and I will potter, have a nap or do whatever. Sometimes we have social things on that we will attend. Sometimes it's pretty cruisey.

In the evening, sometimes it's date night and sometimes Ben is out with friends. When Ben is out, I usually settle in front of the TV and knit, then go to bed, which is pretty much R&R for an introvert.

Sunday

Sometimes Sundays mean social things; sometimes they mean more admin-y/prep things. On Sunday, I try to prepare for the week ahead, and I sit down with Ben and talk through it with him so we're both on the same page.

Church is on in the evenings, and depending on how Astrid is, I stay around and chat for a bit, or take her home straight away, then have some dinner and finish my prep.

Any down time is often filled with odds and ends sort of activities—dealing with my email, checking in with social networking, uploading and tweeting photos/videos of Astrid for the relatives on my private Flickr feed, and so on.

Which reminds me: I should really finish this post with a photo. This one was taken by Toby. I like it because she's smiling and also because it's got both her and me in it:

All right. Enough rambling. Until next time.

But I did want to write something about the way I dress myself. I didn't want this to be a prescriptive post; certainly how you ought to dress yourself is a matter of personal taste and style. I just thought it might be worth noting down somewhere—if only for the sake of comparison. I'm not a fashionista and don't claim to have the best taste in clothes (I can dress very daggily). But one thing that's struck me in the writing of these posts is the immense amount of freedom we have in what we wear. We are to dress modestly to cover our nakedness and not lead others into sin; we are to love others in the way we dress; and we are not to idolise fashion so that it takes the place of God; but aside from all that, there is enormous freedom in what we can wear. Furthermore, our society permits the wearing of a tremendous number and variety of garments; any given person in western society today must own more clothes than people at any other point in history. That's pretty amazing when you think about it. So I thought I would outline how I use my freedom when it comes to fashion—for interest's sake more than anything else.

Another thing: I've returned to thinking about clothes lately because Astrid is starting to move up into the next size and I've had to think about what I need to get her. Most helpfully one of the parents on Facebook pointed out that for the crawling stage, they really need onesies/rompers because two-piece outfits and dresses tend to ride up. (I'm sure it will be different again when she starts walking.) So I've been trying to get some of those as well as a few warm things like cardigans, coats and jackets as winter approaches. But it's been frustrating because children's clothing is so very limited (well, unless you're willing to pay a lot of money for things). Most girls' stuff comes in pink (and when you have a little girl, it is easy to get overwhelmed by all the pink. I wonder if you get overwhelmed by blue if you have a little boy …) Astrid wears pink quite well, but she looks much better in red. I'm surprised there isn't more children's clothing in red as red is a really good colour for both girls and boys. Yet I've found it hard to find things in red—and even green. You really have to be looking. The other popular colour (well, tone) for kidswear is white, which I think is ridiculous because dirt/food/vomit etc. shows up so well on it.

Having known absolutely nothing about children's fashion, it's surprised me somewhat to discover that the same levels of couture (if I can put it that way) exist as in adult fashion. There's your cheap and fairly good stuff that you can get at places like K-Mart and Target (and when they grow out of stuff every 3-6 months, why would you bother getting anything more expensive?) There is the slightly pricier range from common outlets like Pumpkin Patch, Cotton On Kids and Osh Kosh B'gosh (and they reward parents for becoming members by giving discounts and occasional sales, so you feel like you're getting quality for a bit cheaper—but not as cheap as Target and K-Mart, who also have their occasional 30 per cent off all children's clothing sales). And then there is designer childrenswear—the kind that is often featured on Babyology: Sophie's Lane, Gaia Organic Cotton, Seed, even. I personally would not pay $90 for a children's jumper, but I'm sure there are parents out there who would. (I would make one instead, but then I know how and would make the time to do so, whereas other parents probably don't have the time or ability.) Interestingly you get more choice with colours in the more expensive ranges of children's fashion.

You also get less of the ugly prints and patterns. Okay, ugliness is a matter of taste. But even so, there are some real shockers out there that I wouldn't wish on any member of society, let alone its smallest members. (I think, why on earth do the factories even bother producing such eyesores? But again, it's subjective …) Strangely enough, it is really really hard to find coloured plain stuff. You'd think it would be easy to buy a plain pink/blue/red/white romper, but no; they all have pictures and prints and patterns and so on. So far, the only place I have discovered that does it is Ducks 'n' Drakes, and they are a little more on the expensive side. (Very nice clothes though. The only reason why I got some is because they had this terrific discount promotion through Mum's Grapevine.)

Anyway, enough about children's clothes. Back to talking about dressing adults—well, dressing me. I should talk about what I used to do first—which is:

• Check the weather. 18-22° C is good skirt and boots (or possibly sandals) weather; above 23° C is good dress weather. Below 17°, it's best to stick to jeans/pants. Shorts I only wear when I'm going walking, or doing household chores where I know I'm going to get a bit grubby.
• Check the occasion: obviously dressing for a wedding is going to be different from dressing for day-to-day. I'm going to talk about dressing for day-to-day.
• Check what else in the wardrobe is clean/wearable—including underthings. Underthings, unfortunately, determine a lot of what can be worn: you can't wear a white top/dress if all you have in your drawer is black undies/bras.
• Start with a base colour. For me, it's usually black. I wear a lot of it. I think it's because my mum wears a lot of black, but it's also because I'm lazy (black matches everything. Also, dirt and stains don't show up too much on it). Someone once told me that I shouldn't because I have black hair. (That's just bollocks.) Sometimes, depending on whether it's brown or white (I actually look pretty good in white, which surprises me; I think it's because of my skin tone.)
• Match with colours that flatter. For me, that's usually vibrant, bright and warm colours—maroons, reds, browns, dark blues, and so on. I very rarely wear green because I don't have much to match it with. Pastels don't look very good on me (with the exception of light pink, which looks good with black). Yellow was my favourite colour as a child but not anymore; I hardly ever wear it.
• Match patterned things with plain things. If I wear a top with a pattern, the bottom must be plain, and vice versa—e.g. black and white patterned cotton skirt with plain red top; dark blue and white (I love dark blue and white!) buttoned three-quarter length sleeved shirt over beige cami with dusky rose skirt, and so on. (Note that this does not mean that you can't match plain things with plain things; you obviously can!)
• Wear things that suit your body type. Elsie introduced me to the philosophy of Trinny and Susannah and their 12 shapes, and I think that it's really helpful for choosing clothes that flatter your body. I'm an hourglass, which means the primary consideration when it comes to dress is the boobs (sorry to the guys who are reading this!)—avoiding both the “monoboob” and the “too revealing” look, but also finding shapes and styles that work with them without appearing skanky. V-necks, low-ish boat necks and scoop necks work for tops, as well as things that accentuate some sort of vertical line down your middle (to divide the breasts)—like cardigans and jackets. (This is why I don't wear jumpers much any more.) Thing that don't tend to work well with me include tops with high collars (this includes most T-shirts and all turtlenecks!), fitted buttoned shirts, anything strapless and skinny jeans. Unfortunately most of Ysolda's designs wouldn't look too good on me, which is a pity because I love her Snow White sweater and Liesl cardigan. (The latter might possibly work with some amendments but I haven't been game to try …) The body shape thing is a biggie for me in deciding what to knit; there are a lot of patterns that I like, but unfortunately a fair number of these won't suit me.
• When getting dressed for the day, choose the thing you want to wear the most (bearing in mind weather and occasion) and match everything else to that. So today I wanted to wear my brown pants from Rivers (they're made of something like fake suede) because I knew it would be a bit chilly. But it would also be rather warm (18° C; possible skirt weather), so I thought I'd also wear a sleeveless top and bring a cardigan if necessary. I chose a red one because all my other ones are black, but my underthings were unsuited to wearing black, and I took a black cardigan to go with that. I wasn't sure if it would be raining but decided to risk it and wear sandals (Birkenstocks; I am extremely practical about my shoes and don't tend to buy silly useless ones. I also can't wear heels because I'm clumsy and know I'd break my neck.)
• Fabrics: when buying new clothes, try as much as possible to go for natural—cotton, linen, wool, silk, bamboo, and so on. Natural fabrics “breathe” much better, they're often warmer (certainly wool is!) and are of a higher quality. They also don't pill the way acrylic does. (Mind you, I do own a number of acrylic cardigans, and I love that they don't take much to look after. Unfortunately the problem with this rule is I end up handwashing a lot of stuff.) This also applies to my knitting: as much as possible, I like knitting with natural fibres because I think they produce much nicer garments in the end. (Unfortunately fibres like silk are very expensive …)
• A note on accessories: I like socks and shoes to be in neutral colours so they match everything. (So all my socks are black and my shoes are usually black.) I don't have pierced ears (and don't wear earrings of any sort—not even clip-ons), I usually wear a necklace of some sort (it used to be the star my father gave me for my 21st birthday but the chain has broken and I haven't gotten another one yet, so at the moment it's this necklace of recycled blue glass, which I think was made by Simon Harrrison Designs and was given to me by a Uni friend years ago). Bracelets annoy me so I don't wear them, and the only rings I wear are my wedding ring and the ring Ben gave me for our 11th wedding anniversary. If I'm going to a wedding, I might break out the fancier jewellery, but mostly I'm lazy and go with the basics. With purses, I have a small shoulder bag that my mum gave me (it's black and it's a bit like this), and it holds my iPhone, a Moleskine cahier, two pens, my wallet, my keys, a hanky and some of those re-usable bags that you can roll up really small so that they're about the size of a gluestick. When going to weddings, I break out the fancier bags—like the (black!) Christian Dior one my dad and stepmother gave me years and years ago.
• Hair: Again, I'm lazy and leave it out unless it's hot or annoying. (The laziness factor also influences how it's styled: I don't have a fringe, I part it in the middle and I never cut it shorter than shoulder length because that way, I can pretty much leave it to grow and grow until it becomes too annoying/takes too long to blow dry, and then I'll cut it again. This means I tend to only cut my hair about once a year.) I will sometimes tie it up a little for weddings, and put in one of the clips I bought from Crypt Trash at one of the Finders Keepers markets (sorry, don't have a photo of them).

What I do now is slightly different because of breastfeeding: I have to wear things that make that easier—i.e. breastfeeding tops, or things with tops and bottoms (singlet top + skirt; T-shirt + pants). (Most dresses don't work.) The other consideration is matching what I wear to the colour of the nursing bra as I only have two—one black and one beige. Finally, breastfeeding gives you bigger boobs, which means that most of the things I used to wear end up looking a little strange—for example, this circular shrug that I made with some cheap acrylic yarn:

It doesn't look quite right. I think it's a combination of having breastfeeding boobs, plus the pattern is a little top-heavy. In contrast, the Oblique cardigan I knitted seems to work a lot better in terms of shape:

Mind you, the above was taken in my first trimester so perhaps it's not a fair comparison.

Okay, I've rattled on a fair bit but I'm nearly finished. Back to the subject of children's clothing: one of the most annoying things about coordinating outfits for Astrid is getting stuff to match. I try to apply the above principles when dressing her but am thwarted by colours that don't match (unless you go down the pink pink pink path), patterns and prints that clash and (the most annoying bit!) accessories that definitely don't match and clash. Regarding underthings, sometimes I try to match her clothes with the colour of her (cloth) nappy (e.g. when she is wearing a dress), but usually I don't bother. At the moment, she's wearing onesies/rompers—usually ones with no legs or, if it's got legs, no feet (because she's got big feet and the onesies with feet tend to have feet that are too small). It's getting a little chillier now that it's autumn, so the onesies I've got for her are usually long-sleeved. The weather also means that she needs socks, but of course, most of the socks I've got for her are in stupid colours (pink pink pink! Or purple), or they're patterned. (I wish they made black socks for babies. I think most people are against dressing babies in black, though. I remember one of my lecturers saying that kids should be happy and so shouldn't wear black, but I'm a pragmatist and I love black. One day before she's too old, I should knit her this.) The other problem is shoes. She doesn't wear any now because she's not walking, but when she is, all the shoes I have for her (given to us by others) do not match anything in her current wardrobe (*sigh!*) Furthermore, now that her hair is getting longer, we've had to start pinning it out of the way (especially during mealtimes as she tends to get food all through it). The best clips that I have are bright red, which clashes terribly with all the pink. But does that mean I should go buy more …? (Oh man, I just disappeared down the MadeIt wormhole for a bit, looking at hair clips!)

The last thing I want to talk about in this post is the types of clothes we keep in our wardrobes and whether we need so many. I was challenged by the Fashioning Now exhibition—particularly Gene Sherman who only keeps a fixed number of pieces in her wardrobe, and when she buys something new, she retires something old. (There's an interesting interview with her that I must read in more detail later.) Sure, you need different clothes for different kinds of weather, and to a certain extent, clothes for different occasions (work vs. relaxing vs. sleepwear vs. formal events). But beyond that, you don't really need a lot. I find that I don't wear most of my wardrobe, and that some of my clothes are just there because I've held onto it for sentimental reasons, or because it's something I really like but can't wear that often (the more goth-y pieces of my wardrobe are like that—for example, the dress coat I bought from Tree of Life, which only matches one or two other things in my wardrobe [*sigh*], and this:

which I bought for $10 during a trip to the Dandenongs). It's like I have my “working” wardrobe and my special occasions wardrobe. But perhaps it might be better to adopt a more collaborative consumption way of looking at the latter—for example, dress hire (see Can I borrow that? and Dressed Up), or borrowing from friends (this is a little harder because you need to have the same size and body type). For the former, there are overlaps: sometimes I can't really tell the difference between, say, a T-shirt that you sleep in and a T-shirt that you'd wear out.

With Astrid, I haven't bothered yet to get her separate pyjamas because I don't think she needs them at the moment, and really, what's the difference between onesies/rompers and pyjamas? I might when it gets colder and she needs something a bit extra to keep her toasty at night. But for now, I keep thinking, “She's a baby. Does she really need that?”

(That said, I still have fantasies of one day wearing this—though I have no idea what I'd wear it to. I am not sure I could pull off the strapless look though.)

I'm also starting to think that we don't need to launder as much as we do. Don't get me wrong: if it's clearly dirty and/or it smells, put it in for a wash. But if it's okay, you can probably wear it a few times before it needs cleaning.

Okay, looks like I've rambled on long enough. So over to you: how do you dress yourself? What sort of colour and design principles do you use? What sort of things would you like to wear but have no occasion to?

In an early chapter of Nick Hornby's 31 Songs, he talks about a Bruce Springsteen song that he had been listening to pretty much once a week for most of his life. It was an interesting chapter because it reflected on a listener's long-term relationship with a piece of music and how his perspective on it shifted (but also didn't) over time. I thought about that chapter a lot this week because this was the week the Stone Temple Pilots were touring Australia for the first time.

Strangely, despite listening to the Pilots on and off for the past 10 years—despite the fact that they qualify as one of my favourite bands of all time—and despite the fact that the Pilots are one of the few bands that both Ben and I like (though he was the one who introduced them to me first), I don't actually know that much about them. They emerged alongside the grunge scene in the early 1990s, following hard on the heels of Nirvana and Pearl Jam but not enjoying the same widespread critical acclaim (critics accused them of being poor copycats; the fans disagreed). To date, they've released six albums—five of which we own. Some argue that their albums were Core and Purple, but Tiny Music … Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop is our favourite. They split in 2008 (Scott Weiland's drug problems made touring difficult, plus I think there were internal schisms), which made me sad because I thought I'd never get to hear them live. But they re-formed in the last couple of years after pursuing separate projects (Weiland released a solo album, plus he was part of Velvet Revolver for a while; the DeLeo brothers formed Talk Show and Army of Anyone. We own Talk Show, which I quite like, but the mix doesn't quite work with Dave Coutts).

The Pilots' popularity coincided with when Ben was in his middle years of high school—when he and his friends were just beginning to write their own songs and form their own garage bands with early adolescent dreams of becoming rock stars. Like many of his generation, they grew their hair long, skimped on showering and covered up their unkemptness with flannel shirts, and their initial attempts at songwriting were heavily influenced by Vedder and Cobain. The Pilots were one of the ingredients that knit their friendship together, and strangely enough, they've stayed with them throughout the subsequent years.

When Ben and I first got together at Uni (this is after he left his high school garage band), as many couples do, we introduced each other to each other's music. I exposed him to Fiona Apple, Jeff Buckley and The Sundays; he lent me Keith Green, Counting Crows, Van Halen and The Beatles (err, yeah, we're pretty eclectic, musically). Of course, we didn't like everything the other was into; he couldn't stand opera or musicals, and I wasn't particularly fond of Stryper or Larry Norman. But you can't have everything.

Stone Temple Pilots was a band Ben didn't expect me to like. I wasn't into Nirvana or Pearl Jam, I only liked one Soundgarden album (Superunknown), and most of my listening habits revolved around female singer-songwriters, movie soundtracks, mainstream classical and Stephen Sondheim. So I can see why he was surprised. Even now, I'm not 100 per cent sure what it is, but I think it's because the Pilots are not your typical grunge band. “Plush” sounds like it could have been written by Pearl Jam, but the rest of their material—despite the distorted guitars, their crashing “heavy” style and somewhat angsty lyrics (remember I am not a lyrics person)—is a lot more melodic. There's distortion—in both the guitars and Weiland's vocals—but it never overwhelms the music; the melody line seems to sit on top of it all somehow—snaking and almost dreamlike. That's what makes them unique, in my very humble opinion.

The other aspect that I think draws me to them is that they balance out my listening diet a little. The Pilots play very “masculine” music—nasty, angry and destructive at times (note: language warning), but also mellow and even beautiful at others (“Adhesive” is probably my favourite song by them). I wonder if, for guys, they manage to express something that many find inexpressible.

Anyway, over the years, like Ben, there have been periods when I have had the Pilots on high rotation and listened to them almost obsessively, and periods where I've had enough and switched to something else. Yet we keep coming back to them. I don't know if that qualifies them as “comfort” music. I think they need another category we don't have a name for.

When we found out they were touring (this was late last year, I think), we snapped up tickets on the day they were released. The concert at the Hordern Pavilion was on a Sunday night, but as there was only one Sydney show (at that time; later, because the Hordern show sold out, they arranged another one at the Metro), I figured I could make an exception for just one week. (I know others would disagree with that decision … *shrug* …). I figured we would be going with the usual gang from Ben's high school—Leigh, Marto, Fell, maybe Brendan—but I forgot that Fell and Brendan are ministers now and can't get Sunday nights off (also, Brendan didn't go to school with them, but he was in their band). Fell was keen to go to their Newcastle show later in the week, and Ben thought he'd tag along for that one too. I also figured that the wives/girlfriends would not be coming too; the Pilots are really their thing (plus some of the wives were also mothers so would be looking after their babies). I was the interloper, which was a bit weird. But then I've known these guys for over 10 years now, so maybe it's not that weird anymore.

Anyway, we asked Ben's parents to come babysit Astrid. I gave her her last feed, then handed her over to them, and Ben and I jumped in the car and drove out to Moore Park. Not having Astrid with us meant we could listen to the Pilots and crank the volume as we wove through inner city traffic. It had been raining, so the ground was wet, and I had worn my boots to stop my feet from getting wet. But we found we didn't need the umbrella so left it in the car.

We were just in time for the tail-end of the first support act (I have no idea who it was). The venue was already quite full—many thirty somethings like ourselves, though a little older. (I am also a bad judge of age so I could be wrong about that.) I was glad we were at the Hordern, not the Metro; the Hordern has lots of seats, and with the PGP still lingering in my system, there was no way I could have stood up for that long. We managed to bag four places on the left side of the stage, then waited until Marto and Leigh showed up.

They arrived just before the second support act, which was Grinspoon. (Marto was most displeased, and I had to agree with him: their set would have put me to sleep if it hadn't been so loud.) Finally at 9:30, the Pilots took to the stage, and the crowd roared so loudly, I think it took them by surprise a little.

It was a good gig. The sound was terrific (so loud, it threatened to take out our eardrums, but this was a good thing; the Pilots' musical aesthetic is partly about that crashing, pounding aural intensity), they played a mix of classics and newer stuff (but more classics; here's the setlist), and whenever they did one of their older, more well known numbers, the audience sang along and raised their arms in welcome. It surprised me that some of the numbers were a lot slower than on the CD; normally bands speed things up live. Weiland kept the intros short and snappy; he didn't seem to care whether we knew what the songs were about (and perhaps we didn't care either), but the band lost a bit of momentum, taking breaks in between just about every song except the first three. They came back to do just one encore (“Trippin' On a Hole in a Paper Heart”—Ben's favourite Pilots song), and then it was over.

Being the Entertainment Quarter with the worst traffic flow in the universe, we quickly realised it would take forever for us to get out and that we were better off going to get a drink somewhere instead of sitting in gridlock. Just about everything was closed, but the 24-hour convenience store was doing a roaring trade, so we got Cornettos, soft drinks, Brie and crackers, and sat outside a (closed) Golden Century Seafood Restaurant at one of their tables and dissected the show.

Half an hour later, the traffic was less ridiculous, so we parted ways, and Ben and I listened to Tiny Music all the way home.

As the week progressed and I talked about the gig, more Pilots fans came out of the woodwork—from people I never would have expected. One of them told me she hadn't heard about them in years and couldn't believe they were still touring. Another was really disappointed he couldn't go to the Hordern show (his wife was expecting a baby that week). It seemed interesting to me that everyone talked about them with a smile and an element of nostalgia—as if the Pilots were a band they had grown up with, their music forming some sort of soundtrack to their lives.

Last night was their Newcastle show, and Ben left early in the afternoon to take a road trip north with Brendan and Fell. Marto was away on holidays, but Leigh, despite having attended the Metro show and wanting to get rid of his ticket, decided to come too. Instead of sitting (which was probably more to accommodate me—bless them), they stood down near the front. The setlist was more or less the same, but the crowd was friendlier, and the Pilots kept the momentum going and played an extra encore. I couldn't help thinking that that was something that should have happened 10 or 12 years ago when Ben was just coming out of his teens—him and his best mates all getting together, taking a road trip to see their favourite band. But maybe it wouldn't have worked then; I don't know. It made me glad that it could still happen years later when they had all grown up.

Hmm, I have managed to spend the entirety of this post talking about nostalgia and music and your relationship with it over time, and yet I haven't even touched on the song. If you've read this far, you've probably guessed that I just picked a Pilots song at random. I did, more or less. “Adhesive” is my favourite song of theirs, but I do really like “Still Remains”. It's a bit anthemic (and I'm a bit of a sucker for anthemic; wait 'til I get talking about The Twilight Singers in a few of the later posts in this series), but what's interesting about it is it's quite slow. It encapsulates aspects of grunge (and when I listen to it, I imagine scores of long-haired youths nodding along to its rhythms), but still holds to the melody and hooks in both guitars and vocals. I'm going to be a bit of a broken record in saying that I have no idea what the song is about (a girl? a serial killer? suicide? “If you should die before me / Ask if you can bring a friend …”), but it doesn't really matter. I think what I love about it is its laidback-ness (it's mostly in a major key, with a few forays into the minor) and its dynamics—how, with a crash of the cymbals, everything falls away except for lead guitar for a couple of bars, before they all return. I don't know if you can listen to “Still Remains” and not feel good about the world—even in spite of its subject matter. I think that's what makes me keep coming back. Ask me again in another 10 years.

I'm kind of ignoring the definition of “song” here by talking about Frederic Chopin's “Piano Concerto No. 1 in E Minor Op 11 II Romance—Larghetto”. Oh well; I couldn't think of any other songs that make me fall asleep. (Bother; two just popped into my head. Never mind.)

I think that most songs are too short to really get you into a sleep frame of mind. One of the things I've learned from the copious hours I've spent trying to get Astrid to sleep is that the conditions have to be right. It's sort of obvious, given all the tips there are on how to get a good night's sleep, but even though babies sleep a lot, they can't just fall asleep anywhere at any time. (Though occasionally they do it in the most surprising of places at the most surprising of times.) I think Astrid is a bit like me: it takes a while to fall asleep—to let your body enter that restful state where it can just drift off quietly. And certainly part of the job of parenting is helping your child achieve that.

The other thing that is probably significant for this post is that when I was a child, my parents used to help me get to sleep by playing me a tape of classical music. It included things like Ravel's “Bolero” and Gade's “Tango Jalousie”. (I later discovered that many of the tracks on that tape had come from an LP called Echoes of Spain, performed by the Hollywood Bowl Symphony orchestra.) I'm not sure if this practice resulted in me developing a strong association between sleep and classical music, but I do know that it did result in a love of classical music generally, even if I am more of a dabbler and only listen to it occasionally.

Anyway, I think I first heard Chopin's “Piano Concerto No. 1” in the score to The Truman Show. It occurs in the flashback sequence with Truman and Lauren/Sylvia falling for each other in high school, then sneaking out of the library and ending up at the beach. That's where the version I have comes from. It's a truly beautiful piece of music, starting soft with the strings rising and falling before a solo piano takes the lead, heralded by French horns. (I noticed recently that a lot of the classical music I have features the piano. Completely unintentional …) I love how the melody stays quite simple, but then Chopin adds little embellishments—little runs and arpeggios—but never strays too far from the tranquil mood he begins with. Even in the more animated sections of the piece when the strings come back in, it's still quite subdued and restrained. At times, it sounds like it's wallowing into melodrama, but then he pulls it back, returning to his theme. It's almost reassuring—as if to say, “We went off on this tangent for a bit, but now we're coming back to where it's safe—where it's home. Don't worry; we're not going anywhere too scary.” I'm sure all these musical forays do something to the brain: I like to think that each one leads you to drift closer and closer to the land of Nod.

In one of Astrid's sleep playlist, this piece appears as the third track, preceded only by Mozart's “Serenade for Winds (3rd movement)” and Debussy's “Prélude á L'Apres-Midi d'Un Faune” (“Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun”). By the time she reaches the concerto, about 20 minutes has passed, and most of the time, she'll be just about ready to succumb to slumber. I have no proof but I like to think Chopin is what tips her over the edge. Certainly sometimes when I'm sitting beside her cot, that's what he does to me.

30 days of music

• Day 01: Your favourite song
• Day 02: Your least favourite song
• Day 03: A song that makes you happy
• Day 04: A song that makes you sad
• Day 05: A song that reminds you of someone
• Day 06: A song that reminds of you of somewhere
• Day 07: A song that reminds you of a certain event
• Day 08: A song that you know all the words to
• Day 09: A song that you can dance to
• Day 10: A song that makes you fall asleep
• Day 11: A song from your favourite band
• Day 12: A song from a band you hate
• Day 13: A song that is a guilty pleasure
• Day 14: A song that no one would expect you to love
• Day 15: A song that describes you
• Day 16: A song that you used to love but now hate
• Day 17: A song that you hear often on the radio
• Day 18: A song that you wish you heard on the radio
• Day 19: A song from your favourite album
• Day 20: A song that you listen to when you're angry
• Day 21: A song that you listen to when you're happy
• Day 22: A song that you listen to when you're sad
• Day 23: A song that you want to play at your wedding
• Day 24: A song that you want to play at your funeral
• Day 25: A song that makes you laugh
• Day 26: A song that you can play on an instrument
• Day 27: A song that you wish you could play
• Day 28: A song that makes you feel guilty
• Day 29: A song from your childhood
• Day 30: Your favourite song at this time last year

and took an instant shine to it—not just because Kieron was doing it (and his posts are probably the closest thing I'll get to Phonogram perhaps ever—unless both he and Jamie McKelvie are free enough and wealthy enough and motivated enough to do more)—sorry, not just because Kieron was doing the meme, but because the meme reminded me of Nick Hornby's 31 Songs (which goes under the title Songbook overseas [what necessitated the title change? Why???]). And (Must. Not. Drag. Out. Sentences.) one of the things I loved about Nick Hornby's 31 Songs is that watching him going on about stuff sort of freed me up to do likewise:

My second thought is that I'd like to write stuff about stuff. It's almost as if Hornby has given me permission to publicly declare my small opinions on things to the rest of the world. But in a way that would be meaningful, not the rantings and ravings of some juvenile self-obsessed blogger, balancing precariously on her soapbox …

So I'd like to have a go at the meme, but like Kieron, not tackle it in order and definitely not every day.

My other reservation is that I feel like I only listen to music partially. Craig W (in his wedding speech, of all places) reckoned that the world can be divided into people who are music people and people who are lyrics people, and Ben and I are most definitely in the former camp (whereas people like Guan give due attention to both). I couldn't tell you what most of the songs I listen to are about. I wonder if it matters.

Ben reckons it does not. I'm kind of inclined to agree with him. I do not pretend to be any sort of authority on music. Music is just a significant part of my life that I'd like to write a bit about. It's partly stemming from a desire to share (as most of my friends do not listen to the music I listen to), but also, as I said, it's just an excuse to prattle on about stuff.

So bearing all that in mind, let's proceed …

(Oh, I should note that the editor in me could not resist rewriting the meme to reflect Australian spelling and my own punctuation tastes!)

Day 09: A song that you can dance to

I'm not much of a dancer (never done a dance class, despite stating in kindergarten that my ambition in life was to be a ballerina), but ever since reading Phonogram 2.1: Pull Shapes (which is named for a Pipette's song about dancing; please refer to my fangirl tribute to the comic or read the preview online) and a related piece in the Phonogram fanzine, I've thought more about that aspect of music that makes you want to move (a kind of magic, I think), and even though in the past, I have been reluctant to embarrass myself in public, Pull Shapes changed my mind—to the point where, in 2009, I danced in front of the stage in the larger auditorium where the majority of the bands did their set. I probably wouldn't have done it were it not for the fact that Ben, Tim B, Mel B and a few others were also doing it. (One of the bands even commented on the fact that they didn't normally get people dancing at their gigs and that it was really cool that we were.) I still remember that night—how it felt to give yourself over to the music physically and feel it with your body, how much fun it was to do that with other people who were enjoying doing the same thing, and how much I did not, for once, care what other people thought. I am not a good dancer; I'm sure I looked really daggy. But I asked Ben later and he said that my dancing was quite joyful, so perhaps I did something right as I felt joy as I was doing it.

I keep thinking I must compile a playlist of songs I'd like to dance to—a playlist for some imaginary indie music party I keep dreaming about in my head. It would include songs like “Elevator Love Letter” (Stars), “Gimme Sympathy” (Metric) and recent obsessions like “Dancing On My Own” (Robyn) and “Black Sheep” (Metric again).

High on that list would be “Another Runaway”. Ladyhawke's self-titled 2008 album has, for some reason, become a perennial favourite. Like most of the music I listen to, I discovered her through Ben, then listened to her almost obsessively for a number of months. I think I kept coming back to it because it was one of the CDs we kept in the car stacker, which meant I often listened to it on the commute to and from work. Every time I thought about replacing it with something else, I'd remember how much I enjoyed listening to it and refrain. It's funny: the album has a definite 80s vibe, and normally I hate just about all 80s music. But for some reason, to me, “Another Runaway” is what 80s music was trying to be but never succeeded. It's the perfection of that era. Most people prefer “My Delirium”, “Paris is Burning” or “Magic” on that album, but “Another Runaway” is my favourite track. (It should be noted that Ben reckons it's the worst song on that album.) I love the fat synth and the driving, stamping beat of the drums that kick it off; I love the gloriously fun riffs; I love the way the chorus has the flavour of falling in love; and I love love LOVE the instrumental bridge section in the middle where the lyrics fall away and it's like it's just all about the dancing.

As I said, I'm not a lyrics person, so I have no idea what the song is actually about. But it speaks to me of being young, being reckless and being in love, and throwing your body around in space as though it doesn't matter who is watching because you're not doing it for them; you're doing it for you.

Just magic.

I heard through various channels (I think it was Mum's Grapevine) that the Magnolia Square markets were taking place in Paddington over the weekend. As you know, I try to keep something R&R-ish on the agenda every week, so last week I scheduled in some time when I'd go. I wasn't sure if it would work logistically, given that Fridays are usually taken up with taking Astrid to visit my mum, who very kindly babysits her for me while I go to the local café to write, but I figured it was worth a try.

I waited until after Astrid had had her morning sleep, then off we went. We dropped Ben off in Glebe on the way as he was going to try working out of home for the day. Then we continued on to Paddington. I managed to find a park in a backstreet (the Magnolia Square website advised parking in the Moore Park Entertainment Quarter and catching a shuttle bus, but I didn't want to do that, and besides, I didn't think there would be heaps of people there on a Friday morning). Unfortunately parking in Paddington is only one hour, which is a little frustrating as you usually need two. I thought I could do it in an hour anyway. I put Astrid in the pram and went over to the Paddington Town Hall. Lift access was via the Chauvel (I was so glad there was lift access; I wasn't 100 per cent sure there would be, but since the advertisement came through Mum's Grapevine, I figured they had to allow for prams). The market was in the hall on the second floor and it just occupied one room. It was a bit like The Finders Keepers Markets when they first started out several years ago, and had similar sort of things but with more children's and babywear. I snapped a few photos surreptitiously as we toured the room:

There were some lovely things there. I lingered and also returned to the stall featuring cashmere knitwear (sooooo nice! But sooooo expensive!) I did buy a few presents for people, but most of what they had was a bit out of my price range.

It only took about half an hour to go around the entire market (I am a very fast and disciplined shopper), so with the rest of our hour, I decided to take Astrid into the Paddington Reservoir Gardens. I first heard about them through a Two Thousand newsletter in 2009. (I think they got my email address through The Finders Keepers as I don't remember signing up.) Since the, I always wanted to go but was never there at a good time. It's not a big place, but I like that it's sunken into the ground so it makes you feel like you've entered a whole other realm away from the bustle of Oxford Street:

Being a creation of the City of Sydney, there was disabled access in the form of a lift (so helpful for prams!) I didn't photograph them, but there were lots of chairs down there made of wire frames or some such thing. They were okay to sit in, but I wondered how they would hold up with long periods of sitting. There was hardly anyone down there when we went, which I thought was a shame; I like to think that if I lived in the area, I would go there regularly for some writing time—or even sit and think (and possibly knit) time. It was such a lovely and peaceful place! But I guess if it had a lot of people in it, it wouldn't be so lovely and peaceful.

Our hour was up so Astrid and I headed back to the car and I continued on to my mother's place. All in all a delightful morning!

“Life” is a hard thing to describe, though; I'm not quite sure how to tackle it. I think that what I might do is try to describe a “typical” week (bearing in mind that there is no such thing as a typical week).

Monday

At the moment, Astrid wakes anywhere between 5 and 8 am for her first feed (this is after going to bed between 7 and 9 pm; I'm fortunate that she's a sleeper and very rarely wakes in the night. [Though she probably will again during key developmental periods.]) For the past month, after she's done with the first feed, I've been giving her two tablespoons of rice cereal, which they say is a good food to start with when you're beginning solids. (Solids for the first year are more about tastes and textures than nutrition.) The feed plus solids usually takes about an hour. I have my breakfast and then put her back to bed, and then go and get some more shut-eye myself as I've usually not slept enough. She'll sleep for about 1-2 hours more, then after the next feed, I'll get up proper—have a shower, get dressed, start the business of tackling the day, and so on.

Monday is housework day. It became that way because our cleaning lady (whose services are still generously provided for by my mother) could only come on Monday. Then I just decided that it was better if all the housework stuff got done earlier in the week as I tended to run out of stamina later. Our cleaning lady comes once a fortnight, and when she's here, she tackles all the vacuuming, the bathroom and the kitchen. On the weeks she's not here, I do the vacuuming because I'm moulting so much that after a few days, it looks like I haven't vacuumed at all (*sigh*). I also do all the laundry every Monday, which includes changing all the bedding.

However, before I get stuck into the housework, I take Astrid to Music Time at church. It's for children ages 0 to 5, and it involves singing songs (with actions), playing with musical instruments like wooden sticks, toy drums and bells, doing clapping rhythms and listening to a Bible story. The whole thing goes for an hour and then afterwards there's morning tea. Even though Astrid can't participate much (I put her in the Baby Björn and do the actions sometimes holding her hands), I hope she still enjoys it. I've been trying to remember some of the songs and rhymes to do with her at home.

Little Rachel doesn't live too far from church, so we have on occasion met up and then gone back to my place (walking if I have walked). We have also done lunch together, which has been extremely nice. Otherwise I just have lunch at home. These days, during Astrid's “lunch” feed, I'll try to feed her solids again—a fruit or a vegetable (at the moment, it's pear, but she's not into it, so I've started mixing it more with rice cereal because, as a friend pointed out, the pear may be a bit too tart for her).

By the late afternoon, I will have completed most of the housework with just a bit of laundry to go. Astrid gets bathed every other day usually in the afternoon. Sometimes I also have nappies to wash. Ben is now in charge of cooking, so will make dinner for us. We chat and eat, then he will put Astrid to bed (and she usually cries and cries) and I will do the dishes. Then during the rest of the evening, sometimes Ben will work (depending on how much work he has to get done) and sometimes we will watch TV, and I will knit. We try to be in bed by midnight (but sometimes Ben has to work late). Most nights when we're at home end this way.

Tuesday

Mother's group meets between 12 and 2. The members take turns choosing the location. It's a little tricky as there are 14 of us now, so meeting outdoors is preferred, but then there's always the problem of extremes in the weather: too hot, too cold, too rainy, and so on. So sometimes we meet in cafés, which is hard to do, but then not everyone comes every week.

Tuesday is usually food delivery day as well, so Ben tries to be home to receive the groceries, meat, and fruit and vegetables that I order online. I try to make sure the deliveries are scheduled for the afternoon as sometimes we have trouble being awake earlier in the morning (which is understandable if you've been working late into the night).

Bits of housework also get done on Tuesday—basically, any leftovers from Monday, I fold and put away the laundry if it's dry, and I feel like I'm constantly doing the dishes.

Sometimes there are things on in the evening, like Cheesecake Club (which was instituted by Little Rachel who likes to make cheesecakes and have other people eat them; so far, we've had peanut butter cheesecake and breakfast cheesecake) or craft night at Virginia's. Sometimes it's just another night at home with TV and knitting.

Wednesday

The latter half of the week is more social for me. Although on Wednesday I find myself mostly at home, occasionally I'll be meeting friends for coffee, or trying to go for a walk, running errands, attacking the ongoing items on my rolling To Do list, and so on. Because Mondays and Tuesdays can be quite frantic with all the running around, Wednesdays are a nice contrast by being quieter with stuff more at home than out.

This might change; I'm in talks with some friends to start a Bible study group in the middle of the day because we're not fans of morning ones.

Thursday

For the past couple of weeks, I'll try to plan something nice for me to do on Thursdays. This might involve going to the movies (mums and bubs sessions are usually on Thursday mornings), going somewhere (perhaps to see someone; Elsie and I have gotten together a couple of times for lunch and other things), or doing something special that I think would be nice for me (e.g. walk around Centennial Park). I think after Wednesdays at home, often I feel like I need to leave the house and go out for an extended period of time. The nice thing is that if I'm out east, I can give Little Rachel a lift back home since she's not too far from me. I don't even mind being stuck in rush hour traffic anymore because it prolongs the time we're in the car, which means there's a higher chance of Astrid having a nap (because when you're out, it's hard to get a baby to sleep; you kind of have to pick your moments so that you're in a convenient location to feed and change her, and that you're doing something sleep-friendly [like pushing the pram/driving the car] so that she can just drop off to the movement of the vehicle carrying her).

This may also change as I'm trying to get back into writing time with Bec and Guan (only Bec can't make it regularly), so Thursday afternoons may end up being that. Ben said he's happy to mind Astrid.

Friday

At the moment, I spend the mornings at home tending to fiddly little house things like washing nappies, stuffing nappies, cleaning up after solids, doing the dishes and the like. In the afternoon, I've been going to my mum's place as she works from home on Fridays and is happy to mind Astrid for a couple of hours while I go to the local caf´ to do some writing. (It helps that the local caf´ is really nice). This way she gets to spend some time with her granddaughter and I get to spend some regular time writing. It can be hard because sometimes I'm sleep-deprived and can't concentrate or focus, but on occasion I've been able to do stuff like write a blog post. If I can, I try to prepare for these writing times by pulling together as much material as possible so that I'm more productive with the actual writing part (rather than the research part). That doesn't always work.

I'll drive home through rush hour traffic. In the evening, sometimes Ben will be out with his friends and I'll have a quiet one alone at home (once again watching TV or a DVD, and knitting), which is good recharge time for introverted me. Sometimes Ben and I will have a date night (or “marriage time”, as we call it, as per the marriage course). We might get family in to babysit (the grandparents like this as they get to spend time with Astrid) and go out for dinner, then come back to watch a DVD. (Once we went to see a concert—Sufjan Stevens at the Opera House. Just amazing.) Or we might take Astrid with us and go somewhere local to eat, then come home, put her to bed and watch something. Or we might order takeaway/eat leftovers and stay home. We vary it from week to week, but the idea is for Ben and I to have some quality time together.

Saturday

Saturdays vary. Sometimes they have been quiet, and we do things together as a family. Often they have been social, with us getting invited out to things like birthday parties, baby showers, lunches and dinners. In the evening, if Ben didn't go out with friends on Friday night, he will on Saturday night, and I'll stay home and veg out (or occasionally have a friend over). Sometimes date night happens on this night.

Sunday

Sunday is more of a business day than a leisure day. Some rest occurs, with us having some home time to recover from whatever it was we were doing the past couple of days. But I've found myself also doing things like tidying, ordering groceries online and organising myself for the week ahead.

In the evening there's church, which starts at 6. (Depending on when Astrid feeds, we're either early or late.) The service finishes up at 7:30 or so, and I'll hang around for a bit to chat to people, but not for too long as Astrid will be rather grumpy by this stage, so we'll come home so she can sleep. I usually end up having dinner rather late, and I'm also usually tired so go to bed at a semi-reasonable time (unless I'm trying to get ready for the following day; then I'll be staying up doing things).

And then it all starts again.

Hmm, I should find a photo of Astrid to cap off this post. This one will do:

It will be interesting to see how this all changes as the months and years go by. Right now, it feels manageable and even quite leisurely, compared to the crazy life I used to live. (People used to tell me I was the busiest person they knew.)

But what about you? What is life like for you now (with or without children)? (You'll notice I've installed a snazzy new comment system called Disqus on this blog that allows you to comment using social networking. Why not give it a whirl while you're here?)