The Baby who was Meant to Be (part 2)

It's at times of crisis that you really find out the value of your family and your friends. Ours rallied round us in the year that the Cherub was grown and born, and I don't think we could have made it through without all the help and support they gave us.

I was still in the first trimester of pregnancy while Fixit was dicing with death and some of you will know how lovely that time is, when even your earwax is exhausted and you constantly feeling like throwing up. Anyway, this means that I now know the following: stress lessens morning sickness and exhaustion, (in a I'm too worried to pay attention to myself kind of way) but pregnancy exacerbates stress.

In that first 24 hours when they wouldn't let Fixit out of Emergency because he was too touch-and-go to be sent to the cardiac ward, we had my Dad, and our friends Astrid, Mick and Nell all organising care of Climber who was only just 2, and taking care of me too in a here, eat-some-dinner, have you got enough money for phone calls, I'll wait and hear what the doctors say sort of way. And from then on, Dad and Kathy (his wife, a doctor) were constantly at the hospital helping us understand the doctors and terminology and risks and ... stuff! And my Mum dropped everything and immediately flew down from Sydney to stay and care for me and the Climber. And friends and family dropped in meals and rang me up and offered to mind Climber and went to Bunnings to buy sand for him to play in and fixed the buggered alternator in the car and sat with Fixit in hospital and brought him puzzles and motorbike magazines to read. And rang or visited us every day to find out how he was. It still overwhelms me to think about how magnificently people came to our aid, and gives me so much faith in human nature.

Apparently Fixit made medical history at St Vincents where he was so wonderfully looked after, there may even have been a medical journal article about him -woohoo! They told us the doctors were having shouting matches in the hall trying to work out how to treat him without killing him. (Just like E.R.!!) His heart had swollen up by that stage so speed was of the essence but Fixit has only one kidney so there were risks involved. They did explain everything really well to me but I couldn't take it in properly because I was frightened and pregnant. In the end they inserted a filter into the main vein to block any more clots and treated him with blood thinners and it worked and he's still with us today. It's probably just as well he's as tough as an old boot and strong as an ox. Thank goodness.

Once he was home and recovered we were able to announce to his family and the world at large that I was pregnant! I look back and wonder why we just didn't tell more people at the time. I mostly felt that I oughtn't pull focus away from Fixit's situation, but also we didn't want to burden his family and particularly his Mum and Dad with extra worry because they were in that excruciating position of knowing their child might die and now I'm a parent I can't think of anything worse.

The next thing that happened during Cherub's incubation was that I lost my job and we had to move and I got so depressed that there were days that I couldn't stop crying. The job thing is a long story, the gist of which is that the school where I taught tap got sold to an ethically-challenged pain-in-the-arse and I walked away voluntarily. The house thing was that we had been in a great location at very cheap rent but we didn't think we could fit another baby into it so we ended up paying more rent to live further away, and the hardest bit was knowing we'd never be able to afford to move back to that area. And I couldn't stop crying. Fixit had to come home from work one day because I was sobbing so hard I couldn't cook, my friend Astrid made her mother go for a drive so I could come over because I couldn't pull myself together on my own. God it was ghastly. My eyes fill up thinking (and writing) about it.

When moving day came Climber went to visit my Dad, and Fixit's parents, my aunt and uncle and our friends Mick and Nell came over and organised me. I'd done almost no packing, my heart wasn't in it. At least if you're 6 months pregnant people don't get too pissed off with you for not pulling your weight.

This picture is of us on our last day and that was the best smile I could muster! You can kind of see the curve of Cherub. Through all that stress and depression and angst, that little baby kept growing in me and hanging on. I never sat there and communed with my bump like I had for Climber, never insisted Fixit talk to the bump, barely remembered I was pregnant for most of it. So different from that first glorious excitement of carrying the Climber. But that little Cherub grew well and stayed with us and Astrid said "that baby is meant to be."


Only one more obstacle to get through, little bump. The birth. Which must be told tomorrow because again, this is too long!!

The baby who was Meant to Be (part 1)

On the weekend we celebrated the 3rd birthday of my baby, our little cherub. We had a morning tea in the backyard with friends and families and sugar-filled delights, and he got spoiled with lots of wonderful presents. And after all the running around, cleaning, baking, shopping and organising that make parties so much fun for parents, Fixit and I actually did enjoy the proceedings which were nice and casual. Pics here if ya wanna see. (Note to self though. Only 1, make that o.n.e., party a day for my kids from now on. Climber had a schoolfriend's 6th birthday party the same afternoon and ended up spewing in bed at 11.45pm from sugar overload. Noice!!!)

To celebrate the fact that my little cherub is now 3 (three!! - where did the time go?) I thought I would tell the story of his passage to the world. Because there's nothing like a birth story, is there?

Cherub was an accident a surprise! We had not yet got to the point of having the second child discussion, although I was feeling ready. Fixit was feeling like the finances were too awful for us to have more kids, which they were but then again if we'd waited till the finances were good we would never have procreated, ever. I guessed very early on that I'd been knocked up, I was visiting my Mum in Sydney and just got the urge to buy folate tablets. So after I got home to Melbourne and did the test there was a sort of painful "how are we going to manage" conversation. And then not too long after that conversation we went through this incredible health saga with Fixit and the money thing just kind of faded away.

Fixit got a Deep Vein Thrombosis (a DVT) for no reason that we could ever find out. But the problem was it didn't throw up any leg DVT symptoms. It just started sending blood clots quietly up to his heart and lungs. So for quite a while he was feeling awful and breathless, but not in an easily-diagnosable way. So maybe its asthma, maybe bronchitis, lets check out his heart, try ventolin, try antibiotics. And even when finally the leg presented symptoms and we had a firm diagnosis, the breathlessness was not really taken into account so he was sent home to be treated via the hospital in the home system with blood thinners. And then luckily, a very conscientious junior doctor from the GP service we'd been seeing rang us up because he just happened to have been standing near the fax machine and seen the DVT diagnosis and he remembered seeing Fixit and the asthma and he said it's probably nothing but I just want to be sure, could you go the hospital for a nuclear lung scan so we can rule out P.Es (Pulmonary Embolisms or blood clots in the lungs), it's just to be on the safe side. So that's what we did. My friend Astrid took Climber, who was just 2 at the time, and I went with Fixit but kept my distance from him and the nuclear ray machine because I was pregnant.

Next thing we know, it's straight to emergency for Fixit, he's not coming home because his lungs are 75% covered in clots and he could die at any moment and they don't even know how to treat him because his heart and lungs are by now under so much stress that one more PE could finish him off. And suddenly I'm hugging him like mad because we're both so frightened and the possibility of a few minute nuclear rays doesn't register any more.

I've just realised I can't finish this in one hit, especially not on a Monday which is a v. busy day. So at this thrilling point in the narrative, I have to say ...to be continued...

The Doctor is [IN]

As I mentioned in my last post, a parent whose child was about to participate in their first ever Kidtap Concert was asking me what to expect, and I, downplaying it as usual, told her it would all be very low-key.  Striving to understand what I meant by that (who ever heard of a low-key dance concert?) she asked me if there would be a storyline.  I told her she wasn't thinking low-key enough; but part of my brain thought Could there be a story? Why couldn't there be a story? I could make a story. And the idea wouldn't go away. I kept thinking about it, mostly while I was in the shower.  The problem was the unlikely group of songs I was using for the show. They'd been chosen for reasons of dance-ability rather than curated to fit around a theme and at face value had little in common with each other.

At first I thought it's impossible, these songs can never be linked by a common thread. I thought that for a week, but however often I thought that I never let go of doing a story. Eventually, by dint of persistence, more long showers and the knowledge that the linking story could be as flimsy as all get-out if it had a skerrick of sense behind it, an idea that had possibilities presented itself. What if the common theme was advice, what if we set the whole thing in a counsellor's office, and the songs were all answers to problems? Further inspiration came from watching a Doctor Who special of Never Mind The Buzzcocks (on Youtube) where David Tennant suddenly started feeding Catherine Tate "Doctor, Doctor" jokes.

So with a plan in mind, I pitched it to the older kids to see if they'd be interested in being the actors, (umm, YES!!!) and started to fine tune the ideas.  And with a deadline looming, I put myself on lockdown and wrote a script, with the aid of a corny joke book.  The kids and I got together for one crazy, chaotic and creative afternoon a mere 6 days before the concert, where I handed out scripts and roles, gave them some directions and then told them to go home and LEARN THEIR LINES!!  Which they did, bless their cotton showpony socks.  What I loved was how willing they were to run with it, to hit all the jokes and to make a show. Let's put on a show!!! It was truly delicious. No wonder I love my job.

So with dances and lines learnt, lists ticked off and stuff carted over to the local primary school hall, the day of the concert dawned, and it was time to find out if I'd over-reached myself.

This was our opening scene, a waiting room of a doctor's office.



There was some fine ensemble comedic acting, (this scene was a lot of fun to put together) and then they did their seated tap-dance a'capella.  We were up and running!



The second scene was based on a kid (my Climber) seeking help because he was sick of his mother always bossing him around.  We played this for extra laughs by having him direct an accusing look at me over on the sidelines. The doctor's advice? Always do what your mother says, because your Mother is Always Right.  (Cue Climber demanding his money back.) If you need proof of that, just listen to the story of the Three Little Fishies (It's the one where they swam and they swam - against the mother fishie's advice - right out to sea, met a shark and hurriedly came home again).  Look at the adorable Little Fishies, just look at them.



Next we had a patient who wanted to make friends but suffered from shyness. Her doctor suggested she use corny chat-up lines as a solution, (more research required here, it was slightly difficult to find lines with a G-rating but I managed three), and voila, we introduced Jeepers Creepers Where'd You Get Those Peepers? We had a slight glitch with this routine, somehow the kids lined up in a different order than usual and I only noticed this after the song had started. Luckily we hadn't gone too far so I was able to signal Nell to cut the music, rearrange the children and start again.  It was very sweet actually.



The next patient needed help with exhaustion caused by over-scheduling; ie an abundance of extra-curricular activities (basketball, gymnastics, music lessons and *heavy eye roll* dance classes).  So the doctor sent her on holiday, a Swingin' Safari to be precise.  Don't forget your binoculars!



The fifth routine was trickier to thread into the narrative, being as it was a song from a Disney movie about two humans turned into frogs by an evil witchdoctor who were lost in a bayou with a trumpet-playing crocodile, singing about what they'd do when they were human. It only makes sense within its own movie, but it's such a good song to dance to! So the sketch consisted almost entirely of Doctor Doctor jokes until at the end the patient explained the above situation to the doctor, who told her the answer would almost certainly involve kissing (I'm not kissing anyone!), and the dancing started.



Cherub's class were next on, and their song was the hardest to fit in with the theme.  To what childhood problem could My Baby Just Cares For Me be the answer? Don't tell me if you think of something, it's too late now. In the end I gave the patient a non-specific illness. There was something wrong with her but she didn't know what, so the doctor prescribed tap-dancing to Nina Simone as a proven cure-all.  Frankly I'm surprised more doctors don't suggest this. The Groover class once more made excellent use of tap-plates on their hands as well as their feet. (Copyright Miss Caroline 2013)



Here is a picture that shows you the set-up of the stage.  The Consulting Room was off to one side so the dancers could be set on stage in readiness for the music to start.  It was wonderful how well this worked, thanks in large part to Nell wrangling them side of stage (Shufflers on, keep left, Gliders off, keep right etc).  I stood on another little board on the left hand side of stage for tap-dancing / keeping the beat help, and found to my pleasure that I was barely needed for the senior classes' routines. So relaxing! In this scene below, Cherub is playing a laconic dude who is sick of grown-ups asking him what he wants to be when he grows up, so the Doctor's advice was for him to tell the Grown-ups It Ain't What You Do, It's The Way That You Do It. We filled it full of like-speak (LOL, like, totally, like, awesome) for extra gags. 



I was very,very proud of this routine and proud of the kids performing in it. Stars.



We had a little break from dancing while I made a speech, thanking [almost] everyone. Tragically I forgot to thank my dear friend Jenny for her help, particularly for making the gorgeous Doctor Is [IN] booth but she insisted later that she prefers not to be put to the blush in public.  And then it was time for the combined Christmas routines.  The clever Tapsters and Groovers were highly professional with their song (Cool Yule), maintaining their different parts when necessary. They looked very slick.



And then came Here Comes Santa Claus featuring all 4 junior classes on stage, each group doing a class solo plus some all-together-now choreography. I'm surprised my brain didn't explode putting this one together, but it did actually come off quite nicely, considering their first go of doing it with all the other groups had been earlier that morning.  The video footage will show me bolting across the front of stage to physically collect the Tiny Tappers for their cue, as standing on the opposite side of stage beckoning and calling them was completely ineffective. Bless them.



So there you have it. Tapping and a storyline. Not so low-key as all that then. People kept coming up to me afterwards telling me what a good show it was. It felt like a triumph. I was so, so proud of those kids.  My goodness, what a lot of gorgeous right there.



I really, really do love my job.

(Adults Concert tomorrow night! Then I'm starting my Christmas preparations. Eek!)

The Baby who was Meant to Be (part 3)

Right now Cherub, one more push and your birth-story-for-your-birthday is out...

The main thing you need to know about the birth of the Cherub is Vee-back. No, this is not some yogic birthing position. It's an acronym: VBAC, short for vaginal-birth-after-caesarian.

You know how before you have babies you have this kind of tv/movie type idea of childbirth which involves one contraction at which point you turn to your support person and say I need to get to the hospital now and then suddenly you're in a hospital gown and everyone's saying push and you go red in the face for maybe 2 minutes, then a beautiful clean baby is handed you and everyone kind of mists over? Well, when I had my first, aka the Climber, the birth experience I ended up with was more along the lines of; discover have odd blood disorder so give up early on any hopes of natural labour in birthing centre. When labour finally begins (2 weeks overdue will you just get OUT of me please) only get admitted to hospital on the third time we front up, get strapped to bed with electronic gizmo belt to monitor foetal distress due to meconium in waters, and spend next 15 or so hours watching my contractions on a piece of graph paper, vomit copiously into kidney dish and watch poor Fixit try to deal with mess because midwives busy with women whose labours are actually progressing, get increasingly frustrated by non-dilating cervix, steadfastly cope without the epidural (still trying for some semblance of natural birth) then get told baby in distress and end up with emergency caesar. Which after all the above was a big relief actually, kind of like being told its okay you don't have to finish this job, we'll do it for you. But as I say he was in distress so after the caesar I got one little glimpse of him and it was off to special care with him and Fixit, and I was sent to recovery on my own with the night nurse. It was hours before I held him. It wasn't quite how I'd pictured it.
And I know it's all about the package you get at the end and not how he was delivered but still..

So I read up about this VBAC thing and I talked it through with the charming Dr Shane of the Royal Women's Hospital and he was great and supportive and I signed up. Even though at one of my visits I was seen by Dr-Old-School who put the fear of God into me about the risks because if your caesar scar ruptures during labour its straight to the operating theatre and if it comes to that would you like us to tie your tubes while we're in there (what?) and by-the-way you may end with a hysterectomy if anything goes wrong.

I found the onset of second baby labour much more sudden than first. With Climber it was pleased smile, ooh, I think that might have been a contraction!! Whereas Cherub started with one biggish contraction which caused waters to break, after which it was straight to the top of the richter scale with every one. Couldn't move without having a screechingly a.w.f.u.l cramp. At the hospital they saw me trying to manoeuvre from standing to sitting in the waiting room chairs, called for a wheelchair and admitted me immediately.

So its feeling a bit familiar now because I've vomited in the kidney dish again, and I'm strapped to the bed with the belly monitor, but after a few hours of agony, the spectre of the ruptured uterine scar was beginning to haunt me as was the pain and I called for the man with the back needle...ohh the relief. Suddenly its calm in there and I suggest to Fixit he might like to walk himself down to the shop to get a coffee for him and the crossword for us. Which unnerved him considerably. With Climber I'd made a fuss when he left the room to wee. And I'm quite enjoying myself now, the cervix is dilating away with no effort on my part at all, wheee this is so easy and I feel fine, but they have given me the top-up button to control the epidural which apparently you can't overdose with but after a while I realise I've been a bit trigger happy because I've lost all sensation up to my neck and at that point they take it away from me.

At some stage I start having blood pressure issues (went down to 50 over 30 at one stage) which sends Cherub into distress and means that every so often they have to heave me like a paralysed whale onto my right side (if they put me on my left I vomited) and of course the anxiety levels go through the roof again because distressed baby means caesar. And because I was anxious and woozy from low blood pressure I can't remember it all now, but somehow we made it to pushing. But I've got a shitload of medical staff in the room now so things aren't too hot. So for my more natural birth here's what I ended up with: stirrups, vacuum thing, two types of forceps, a tear, an episiotomy, haemorrhaging, blood transfusion and at least an hour of stitching. (We're talking salt baths for the next 3 months)

But I do get the plop of a warm, bloody baby on my chest for a little minute before the pediatric team whisk him into the corner and check the vitals. And it's another boy. And he's okay. And its not long before they let me have him again and he has a good quiet breastfeed and I hold him and look up at Fixit and I'm so happy I did it this way.


And now he's three. Our little cherished cherub. Thanks for holding on.

Happy birthday.

Here I go again.

In between watching Fixit's privates gradually return to something like their original shape and hue (he has recovered enough that he is even back on a [borrowed] motorbike now and ps massive thanks to Jen for lending us her car in the meantime), we have also been busy with the following:

Climber went to the District Swimming Carnival last Thursday to compete in the backstroke and I actually thought he was going to do respectably well in it, because he seemed to be swimming as fast as the other boys. Unfortunately he hasn't really mastered the go-straight bit of backstroke. So what with being tangled up with a lane-rope for a good 5 metres, then being tangled with that same lane-rope and another badly-steering-backstroker, then deciding to veer right away from that stupid lane-rope/backstroker at pretty much a 90 degree angle which meant that he had to stop to get his bearings approximately one-third of the way into the race, he stopped looking like he was in contention well before the race was over. Agonising to watch it was. He was of course last, and he was pretty dashed by that, despite my reassurances. So I made an executive decision to ditch school for the rest of the day, and we met up with Fixit (who was in between various ball-checking appointments) and drove to Carlton to spend Climber's birthday book vouchers at Readings and thence to Brunetti for cake therapy.



I think it worked.

Climber's teacher has been reading Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief to the class, and Climber has really been enjoying it. (Greek mythology meets 21st century American high school.) So we bought Book 1 and Book 5 with his vouchers (Readings didn't have Books 2-4) and he read it at every spare moment from Thursday when we bought it til Monday when he finished it. I never thought I'd see Climber-the-action-boy reading like that and it is making me very happy. So happy that I went straight to The Book Depository for the other 3 books in the series, even though it's not his birthday or anything.

Fixit's best friend the Bike Nazi is moving to Brisbane and his wife has been trying to juggle minding the 9-month-old baby and packing up the house. So the last 2 days I've taken the baby in the afternoon. Gawd it felt weird to be wheeling a pram again, and my goodness you move on quickly! I walked down to the school with her to pick up the boys then we headed to the park where we ate hot chips and I let her play on the equipment. The boys think it's great. She can't walk but she can climb up the little slide and although I am well-used to climbing children, I did have a minor heart-attack when she somersaulted face-first down some little stairs, even though I was guarding and -just- holding on to her. I thought she was going to break her neck, but she didn't even cry much to the amazement of the other mothers who saw it.

Me old mate Michelle was in Melbourne for a girls' weekend so I went to see Mamma Mia with her. Normally I say - with perfect truth- that I can't afford musical theatre, and I was not expecting for $110 to be sitting in the 2nd-from-back-row, but actually the back rows at Mamma Mia are a good thing because we were up and singing/dancing right from the start of the encore unlike the more staid front row types who had to wait till the cast encouraged them up. And that was totally good fun. You-oo can dance, You-oo can ji-ive etc.

The kids were ecstatic to have a sleep-over at Crafty's house on the weekend, and I think I can say with authority that they must have had an excellent time, because they both proceeded to be completely shattered -and in Cherub's case, rather tearful- for all of Sunday.

I took part in Sooz's big tea-towel swap and am very relieved to have posted my offerings a full 3 days before the deadline. I'm only doing a partial reveal here as don't know if they've arrived at the other end yet, but I worked with freezer-paper stencilling, which is unbelievably easy and effective, and applique, which was quite a bit more fiddly and lucky I was going for an arty look anyway because I doubt I could achieve perfection with that. Anyway, I was quite pleased with how they turned out. But I was so intent on getting them sent out that I forgot to photograph the slightly different one I made for Craftastrophies, so hoping that Kate will take a few pictures when her big move is over. Proper look at the one I sent to Jellybaby on my Flickr site though, if you want. My personal design brief was I wanted to make a tea-towel that looked good hanging on the front of your oven, which is where I always hang mine. I was also going for mild subversiveness.

And so that was Christmas.

Hello! I'm sneaking in a last-minute post to record our December festivities, and now that I'm on holidays may even sneak in a few more to belatedly fill in some gaps from this year!  But first, before I forget: Christmas.



Christmas just seems to get more crazy every year, in terms of my workload. Some days I romance the idea of a mid-year tap concert for my school, but my students and I probably need the December concert to be a big full-stop (really an exclamation mark!) for the whole year of tap. So I spend November and December in a panic: producing, directing, choreographing and administrating two concerts; all the while trying to keep some headspace free for the myriad of other things that need to be done at the end of the year. What it means is that by the time I'm ready to get Christmas prep started I'm exhausted and having to push through in a slightly hysterical manner.



Anyway. We got the tree done very early in December, and everything else (shopping, cooking, wrapping, card-writing) very, very late, but it did all come together on the day.  I woke on Christmas morning with my heart racing, thinking something important happens today, what is it? and then I thought oh yeah, Christmas and stopped thinking work-work-work and instead tried to relax and enjoy.



The kids came in to our bedroom at a very respectable 7:30am and opened their stockings with us. I do like this time, watching them dig in and find a little something and then show it to us all, then wait patiently for their brother to do the same.  It's quite lovely.



Poor Cherub had to wait before we opened the under-the-tree presents.  Like Inigo Montoya, he hates waiting. But everyone needed to be dressed and breakfasted and ready to leave before the wrapping paper could be ripped away.




I think everyone liked what they received but I am conscious that Christmas carries the weight of expectation, a feeling that maybe under the tree is something so lavish and wonderful that you'll explode with happiness.  And then there's just the dvd you requested and a smallish lego set. On our income with all these people to buy for there is never going to be a big ticket item for anyone, even when I do let the guilt get to me and spend more than I think I ought to on them.  And I think our kids know this and accept it in theory, but they also carry this memory of being 4-years-old, and receiving a really big box full of Thomas the Tank Engine stuff that blew their mind with excitement.  Christmas does  kind of go downhill after that.  But hopefully after you realise that the fireworks present isn't happening this year, you take stock of the nice stuff you did receive and feel happy and grateful. Hopefully.





In the lead-up to Christmas we had a couple of family gatherings, a big get-together with my Mum's extended family (aunts, uncles, cousins and second cousins galore!) which is always fun, although as it was scheduled on the same day as my Tapkids Concert, I was pretty wiped out during and didn't manage any photographs.  My boys are always pretty popular with the younger kids at these parties and generally walk away with a devoted fan each year.  This year it was 5-year-old Alec who insisted that Climber needed to come to his house for a sleep-over.  Anyway. Here's a photo of my Mum staying with us afterwards.  It was good that she was able to be here, especially to spend time with my sister who is recovering from horrid-but-successful treatment for tongue cancer.



Then there was our Mothers Group Christmas celebration, our 14th! This year we tried the kids out with a 'crap-cringle' which is where instead of buying presents targeted at a specific person you lucky-dip for a gift and if you don't like it you can exchange it for a present that has already been opened. This system favours persons whose name comes out of the hat last, and ruthlessness is meant to be the name of the game, something I'm sorry to say my children displayed shamelessly. This meant we came home with the giant Toblerone and the giant box of Malteasers.  Also the gingerbread house kit, which I think meant we got ALL the sweet stuff.  Good work, Fixit males.



Despite this, my kids have decided that they prefer being bought for over the riskiness and crazy fun of crap-cringles.  They have always been fairly cautious individuals.



On Christmas Day we spent lunch time with the Fixit family, and I really only took one acceptable photo (Pa Fixit handing out presents) and then the afternoon onwards at my aunt and uncle's house with my sister and brother and father and half-brothers and cousins. Didn't take a single shot there, but we had a lovely time and ate some very fine food indeed.



On Boxing Day we headed to Barwon Heads to see some more of my family, and enjoyed more good food and company.  Climber and Cherub were very taken with baby Beatrix.





And then it was back home to play with the lego and the computer game and to read the new book and eat some of that chocolate, and to rest and stop rushing. It's all good. All that rush and work and effort means there's a busy vibrant Christmas going on round our way, and really that's something to be very happy about. Family, friends, food and fun. Christmas as it should be.  Hope yours was too.

Things You Might Already Know...

...if you are my facebook friend. And a few extra things as well.

• Fixit and I went and saw the mighty Bill Bailey at the Palais. I'm on Bill Bailey's mailing list, which meant I was able to book earlier than regular punters and thus we ended up in excellent seats alongside the rest of the fanclub. If you want to know where all the geeks and nerds and trainspotters of Melbourne were on July 17th, I can tell you that they were sitting down the front with Fixit and me. I've never seen so many in one place, but then I suppose I don't frequent comic-book conventions, boom-tish. Apparently if we'd hung around a bit longer after the final encore we would have seen BB wander out and do another 30 minutes of material for the die-hards. I almost wish I hadn't been told that, but I suppose it's useful knowledge for the next time we see him. It was an excellent show and my favourite part was his rendition of Cars by Gary Numan where he used a whole lot of those horns with the rubber squeezy thing on the end, all differently tuned, to make up the synth solo.

• Last night I finally sorted, folded and put away the mountain of clean washing which was taking up every available surface in my bedroom. Those of my facebook friends still cowering under their own piles of clean washing were either mildly abusive or congratulatory, depending, I suppose, on how big their piles were.
  

• I went to another Creche Trivia Night and we were winning the whole way, until the music round came up, at which point, somewhat surprisingly, we bombed. I hate coming third. I still feel disgruntled. Also, I hate bombing out on the music round, and the following day found me on iTunes listening to MGMT and MIA to see if I liked them and should be downloading them so as to keep up with the young peoples. To date I have not. I'm not ruling it out though.
  

• Both my boys now know about menstruation. Periods have been a very well-kept secret in this family because blood makes the Climber feel highly anxious. But we'd read this great book about a pre-adolescent girl (Do Not Read This Book), and the kids loved it so then we borrowed the sequel (Do Not Read Any Further) which saw the main character well and truly hit puberty. I'd been reading ahead and knew the period bit was coming up, so I'd prepared myself to talk about it. However, that chapter arrived on one of my teaching nights, so poor Fixit stumbled into it, suddenly realised he'd hit an area he was in no way ready or even qualified to speak about and promptly skipped forward a few pages. Hilarious. But seeing as I'd primed myself to 'splain it to them, I went back and read the missing pages to the boys the next night and had the chat then. As predicted, poor Climber felt terribly anxious about it and I had to keep saying things like it doesn't gush out and it's not really the same as your normal blood and it's perfectly fine etc. Then I showed them the paraphernalia and that was that. But it did remind me of another thread on my facebook page, about the paraphernalia, where said "ladies products" were discussed. When my kids first saw a tampon roll out of my handbag and asked me what it was, I'd said it was a bandage, which when you think about it, is true. Another friend said, under pressure and on the spur of the moment, that they were earplugs. Earplugs! Gosh that makes me laugh and I immediately asked if she'd ever then seen her kids stuffing them into their ears at any later date (she said not yet). Most hilariously of all, another friend, who, as a child, had not quite been told the difference between sanitary and table napkins, had set the table with the sanitary variety because she'd thought that would be extra nice for the dinner guests. I'm still trying to picture how that must have looked, tucked neatly under the knife and fork.
  

• I scored a free ticket to see a contemporary dance piece last week. I enjoyed it, I did, even though I went in with the preconceived idea that contemporary dance was all about how many times you could fling yourself at the floor - evidently been watching a bit too much So You Think You Can Dance. But what I came out thinking was: for a dance piece there wasn't much actual dancing. To be honest, the years of dance training they probably all had were not needed to perform this piece, they could just as easily have been first year drama students and I'm saying that as someone with dance and drama training. But a good piece of theatre, truly. I think my reaction says more about my lack of knowledge of contemporary dance practice.

• The Cherub has had his first sex-education where-do-I-come-from chat, aged 6 and 3/4. (Compared to the Climber - he was 5 when he first asked me about it, I was really not ready for that one - this is quite backward.) Cherub was about to hop into the bath and had given me a little kiss when he suddenly asked me if kissing would make a baby. So we had a big chat about seeds and eggs and where they were and what needed to happen to bring them together so you could make a baby. For the record, when I got to the part about the um... insertion, a look of mild disgust crossed his face and he said errr. After we'd had the whole lesson, he said but Savvas says a Saint Kilda player (footballer) kissed a teenager and she had a baby. So this is what the 6 year olds are talking about at school, hey. Now I wonder if Savvas will be getting his own little educational playground 'chat' and wondering if I need to give his parents the heads-up.
  

Say "Aaaaaaah"

Fixit's mother is deeply sympathetic to a teething baby. She tells her grandchildren that teeth give you grief. "They're trouble when you get them and they're trouble when you lose them."

I've just been to the dentist for the first time in FOUR YEARS.

In theory I would prefer not to leave it quite so long between visits, based on the knowledge that regular appointments greatly reduce the likelihood of Highly Traumatic Treatments (and highly traumatic bills for those treatments). But pregnancy and babies hijack my good intentions. Not to mention my calcium levels if the post-Climber dental visit was anything to go by (to wit: Root Canal. Ouch). But then, I breast-fed Climber for much longer than the Cherub who was a self-weaner and I may never really get over that rejection Cherub. Just so you know what kind of recriminations are heading your way when you get older.

Anyway, you could argue that Cherub hasn't been a baby for quite a while now, so I could conceivably have gone to the dentist at least a year ago, but after all that root-canal distress I had realised something. Which was that I did not like my dentist. And so this meant that not only was I uncomfortable - on a purely emotional level, I might add, she is actually a highly skilled operator with every new-fangled gleaming bit of equipment you could want - in the chair, I also really resented paying out what felt like an extortionately high percentage of our income to her.

Obviously the thing to do was to find a new dentist, but it's veeeeery easy to drag your feet on this sort of chore because you know at the end of it you will be getting drilling in your head and a large amount removed from your bank balance. But I asked around for recommendations. Here's the thing. People actually don't really give glowing recommendations for their dentists. Even people who have good dentists. Based mostly on the fact that none of us really like going, which colours your whole attitude to the professionals in question and must be a bit of a bummer on a personal level for them, don't you think? I reckon they must get much less of the "oh you must try my chiropractor he's a genius" type affirmations, however well they do their job. Poor old dentists.

But eventually one of my friends did speak really glowingly of her dentist. Not expensive, nice person, kiddie-checkups for free and she really liked him. And someone else we knew also saw him and absolutely concurred.

So I went and saw my new dentist with doom in my heart because it was FOUR YEARS since my last visit. His 'chambers' were poky little rooms, the mags were all at least a year out of date, they hand-wrote their accounts and still had the non-electronic credit card imprinting machine. No wasting my money on expensive overheads here. BUT!! He made me laugh during my check-up, and he explained stuff properly and didn't patronise me.

And best of all he told me my teeth were in pretty good shape! The bottom teeth are a.b.s.o.l.u.t.e.l.y fine and I've only 3 very small spots to be fixed up top. *leaps into the air and clicks heels together* So as far as I'm concerned he's welcome to my hard-earned and not only will I be taking the kids there for their first ever check-ups, I also Solemnly Swear I Am Up To No Good I Will Book In Every 6 Months for a Check-up!

Basil The Cat Q&A

WHAT'S WITH THE NAME?
Our last kitty was called Bertie Wooster, which was a name I absolutely LOVED. It was really hard to think of a name that could live up to that, especially because Cherub kept nagging me: he needed the name NOW. So I was harassed-ly flicking through my mental library of well-known literary or real or film/tv characters and Basil Fawlty cropped up. Basil seemed like a good name. When he's naughty I can do my Sybil Fawlty impersonation. Basil! We most definitely do not say Bay-sil in Australia.



WHERE DID YOU GET HIM?
We got the new kitty from a breeder in Macclesfield, which is a long drive from our house, all the way to the Dandenongs. His breeder was recommended to us by Bertie's breeder, and I'd been watching the ad for him for a couple of weeks while I agonised over whether we could afford him, in light of the great motorcycle disaster. Of course, we can't, not really. But he was still there after a couple of weeks, so I figured it was meant to be. He is, after all, a lilac burmese.



The family who sold him to us had 3 very nice boy-children and such was their rapport with my kids that the Climber and their eldest boy exchanged email addresses and have been sending each other little messages all day. It also turned out that the family ran an online toy shop so I was able to buy the kids a Sonic Screwdriver at the same time, because I have started letting the kids watch Doctor Who this year. It scared them so much the first time that Cherub was glued to my lap and Climber was awake from 12.30am to 2am that first time, but they've got the hang of it now.


Doctor Climber attacks a Dalek-Cherub with the Sonic Screwdriver

WHAT SORT OF CAT IS HE?
Basil is a Burmese cat, they make extra good pets because they are so friendly and clever and affectionate and playful. Even better, he is a lilac Burmese, which considering the whole purple fixation I have going on, made him fairly irresistible to me. He even has a purple nose.

HOW'S HE SETTLING IN?
Really well, considering he's just been ripped from his home, his mother and his many kitten friends and siblings. He seems to have a really sweet nature, not so much of the bad-ass attitude of the last puss. He's successfully acquainted himself with the litter-tray (after having an accident on the sheepskin rug I'd given him to make him feel comfortable). He's eating, he's cuddling, he's slept on Cherub's bed, he's played. He's just lovely actually. He's not 100% at home yet, but he's doing really well.

WHAT'S HE LIKE?
Teeny. Soft. He has a croaky meow like a creaky door. Extremely pretty. Smoochy. Still a bit nervous, but getting braver.



ARE THE KIDS HAPPY?
Oh yeah, baby.